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Lindbergh out of the plane. He said later that “it was like drowning in a human sea.” A couple of French pilots, realizing how disorientated Lindbergh must be, quickly threw a coat over his shoulders, took off his helmet and placed it on the head of a nearby American reporter, and spirited him into the airfield’s office, leaving his substitute to the crowds, who carried the wrong man triumphantly towards the official reception committee. His hosts laughed off Lindbergh’s worries about not having a French visa; France was his, they said. After meeting the American ambassador, at whose house he was to stay, his new friends bundled him into a car bound for Paris by back roads. Spirit was left under armed guard to protect her from souvenir hunters.

News of the hero’s safe arrival was wired to New York and bells rang out across the country. That night, at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, a new version of the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, was danced in Lindbergh’s honor to accompanying screams of “Lindy’s done it, Lindy’s done it!”

Ambassador Herrick’s motorcade took so long to get back to Paris through the celebrating throngs that Lindbergh had eaten his first meal in two days (light soup and an egg) and had a bath by the time his host arrived home at 3 a.m. After a short press briefing Lindbergh got into bed, sixty-three hours after he had last slept.

Herrick cabled Evangeline Lindbergh in Detroit: “Warmest congratulations Stop Your incomparable son has honored me by being my guest Stop He is in fine condition and sleeping sweetly under Uncle Sams roof.” When she went out to meet the press, Evangeline’s usual restraint failed her. With tears in her eyes, she said that although she had never doubted that her son would complete his journey, “I am so happy that it is over, more happy than I can ever tell . . . He has accomplished the greatest undertaking of his life, and I am proud to be the mother of such a boy.”

The next few days—and weeks, and months—passed in a whirl. When, next afternoon, Herrick led Lindbergh on to a balcony to wave to the cheering crowds below, he realized that his flight had transformed his life forever. Aged twenty-five, he had become public property. Everywhere he went people pressed forward to shake his hand, to touch his clothes, to congratulate and applaud him. From then on, he reflected years later, life “could hardly have been more amazing if I had landed on another planet instead of at Paris.”

Harry Crosby and his father were among hundreds who called on Herrick to meet Lindbergh the day after his landing. Thousands more lined the streets every time he ventured out in public. Lindbergh insisted on calling on the parents of the French airmen who had disappeared while making their Atlantic attempt two weeks earlier. He paid his respects to Louis Blériot, who told him that he was his heir “and the prophet of a new era.” Most of his time was spent at receptions and meeting the press. He was presented with the Legion of Honor. Everywhere his behavior was marked by patience, good-humor, courtesy and humility—an achievement, as one historian observes, even more impressive than his flight.

After a week of official engagements and adulation, Lindbergh left Paris for England, spending a night in Belgium en route. In London he met the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and was personally congratulated by the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace. George V presented him with Britain’s highest peacetime honor, the Air Force Cross, but a more private matter was of greater interest to him: “Now tell me, Captain Lindbergh. There is one thing I long to know. How did you pee?”

At the beginning of June, Lindbergh returned to the United States aboard the USS Memphis. As the gunship cruised up the Potomac towards Washington, Lindbergh was given a twenty-one-gun salute—a tribute previously reserved for heads of state. Over the next three months Lindbergh toured the country attending parades, receptions and benefits in his honor, promoting and “stimulating popular interest in the use of air transport.” Countless reams of