it was Bobinet's personal courier, who handed the hapless cripple a packet "from the First Consul." Who can describe the surprise and delight of the old soldier when upon opening the packet he found inside it the Bronze Medal!
Thanks to a character of such striking qualities, it is not surprising that Bobinet finally consented to gratify the fervent desire of the whole nation, and on the 14th of August proclaimed himself, amid universal enthusiasm, Emperor of the French.
The whole world thus entered upon a period which, though anything but peaceful, was to be glorious in history. Every quarter of the globe literally blazed with heroic feats of arms. Seen from Mars, our earth must certainly have shone like a star of the first magnitude, from which the Martian astronomers doubtless concluded that we were still in a condition of glowing heat. You can well believe that chivalrous France and her representative, the Emperor Toni Bobinet, did not play a minor rôle. Perhaps, too, such remnants of the Absolute as had not yet escaped into space were at work here, awakening a spirit of exaltation and fervour. At any rate, when the great Emperor proclaimed, two days after his coronation, that the hour had come for France to cover the whole earth with her banner, a unanimous roar of enthusiasm gave him his answer.
