When this engine, no matter in what way it was launched, exploded, not on striking the object aimed at, but several hundred yards from it, its action upon the atmospheric strata was so terrific that any construction, warship or floating battery, within a zone of twelve thousand square yards, would be blown to atoms.  This was the principle of the shell launched by the Zalinski pneumatic gun with which experiments had already been made at that epoch, but its results were multiplied at least a hundred-fold.

If, therefore, Thomas Roch’s invention possessed this power, it assured the offensive and defensive superiority of his native country.  But might not the inventor be exaggerating, notwithstanding that the tests of other engines he had conceived had proved incontestably that they were all he had claimed them to be?  This, experiment could alone show, and it was precisely here where the rub came in.  Roch would not agree to experiment until the millions at which he valued his fulgurator had first been paid to him.

It is certain that a sort of disequilibrium had then occurred in his mental faculties.  It was felt that he was developing a condition of mind that would gradually lead to definite madness.  No government could possibly condescend to treat with him under the conditions he imposed.

The French commission was compelled to break off all negotiations with him, and the newspapers, even those of the Radical Opposition, had to admit that it was difficult to follow up the affair.

In view of the excess of subjectivity which was unceasingly augmenting in the profoundly disturbed mind of Thomas Roch, no one will be surprised at the fact that the cord of patriotism gradually relaxed until it ceased to vibrate.  For the honor of human nature be it said that Thomas Roch was by this time irresponsible for his actions.  He preserved his whole consciousness only in so far as subjects bearing directly upon his invention were concerned.  In this particular he had lost nothing of his mental power.  But in all that related to the most ordinary details of existence his moral decrepitude increased daily and deprived him of complete responsibility for his acts.

Thomas Roch’s invention having been refused by the commission, steps ought to have been taken to prevent him from offering it elsewhere.  Nothing of the kind was done, and there a great mistake was made.

The inevitable was bound to happen, and it did.  Under a growing irritability the sentiment of patriotism, which is the very essence of the citizen—­who before belonging to himself belongs to his country—­ became extinct in the soul of the disappointed inventor.  His thoughts turned towards other nations.  He crossed the frontier, and forgetting the ineffaceable past, offered the fulgurator to Germany.

There, as soon as his exorbitant demands were made known, the government refused to receive his communication.  Besides, it so happened that the military authorities were just then absorbed by the construction of a new ballistic engine, and imagined they could afford to ignore that of the French inventor.