Meanwhile Lieutenant Bobinet . . . but no. Let us abandon any attempt to psychologize great men, to express the titanic idea in the germ from which it sprang. We are not equal to the task, and if we were, we should perhaps be disappointed. Just picture to yourself this little Lieutenant Bobinet sitting on Les Aiguilles with Europe falling into ruin all about him—a battery of mountain guns in front of him, and below him a miniature world which could easily be shot to pieces from where he sat. Imagine that he has just read in an old copy of the Annecy Moniteur the leading article in which some M. Babillard calls for the strong hand of a helmsman who will steer the good ship France out of the raging storm toward new power and glory; and that up there, at a height of over two thousand metres, the air is pure and free from the Absolute, so that one can think clearly and freely. Picture all this, and you will understand how it was that Lieutenant Bobinet, sitting there on his rock, first grew very thoughtful and then wrote his venerable, wrinkled, white-haired mother a somewhat confused letter, assuring her that “she would soon be hearing of her Toni,” and that Toni had “a magnificent idea.” After that he saw to one thing and another, had a good night’s sleep, and in the morning assembled all the soldiers of his battery, deposed the incompetent old captain, took possession of the military post at Sallanches, declared war on the Absolute with Napoleonic brevity, and went to sleep again. The following day he shot to pieces the Karburator in the bakery at Thônes, occupied the railway station of Bonneville, and seized the command at Annecy, having by this time three thousand men under him. Within a week he had destroyed over two hundred Karburators and was leading fifteen thousand bayonets and sabres against Grenoble. He was proclaimed commandant of Grenoble, and now had a small army of forty thousand men at his back, with which he descended into the valley of the Rhone and busied himself in painstakingly clearing the surrounding territory of all atomic motors by means of his long-range guns. On the road to Chambéry he captured the Minister for War, who was hurrying in his motor-car to put Bobinet back in his place. The Minister for War was so captivated and convinced by Bobinet’s plans that he made him a General on the following day. On April 1st the city of Lyons was completely cleansed of every trace of the Absolute.