It is old as Rameses.
Yet in his own way Jean Jacques did what he felt he had to do.

The thing he was going to do was hopelessly obvious, but the doing of it was Jean Jacques' own; and it was not obvious; and that perhaps was genius after all.

There are certain inevitable things to do, and for all men to do; and they have been doing them from the beginning of time; but the way it is done--is not that genius?
There is no new story in the world; all the things that happen have happened for untold centuries; but the man who tells the story in a new way, that is genius, so the great men say.

If, then, Jean Jacques did the thing he had to do with a turn of his own, he would justify to some degree the opinion he had formed of himself.
As he walked back to his desecrated home he set himself to think.

How should it be done?
There was the rifle with which he had killed deer in the woods beyond the Saguenay and bear beyond the Chicoutimi.