John was impressed once more by his extraordinary strength and agility, despite his smallness.

He seemed to be a mass of highly wrought steel spring.
But unwilling to be beaten by anybody, John raced with him and the two stood at the same time upon the utmost crest of the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur.
They paused a few moments for fresh breath and then John put the glasses to his eye, sweeping them in a slow curve.

Through the powerful lenses he saw the vast circle of Paris, and all the long story of the past that it called up.

Two thousand years of history rolled beneath his feet, and the spectacle was wholly magnificent.
He beheld the great green valley with its hills, green, too, the line of the Seine cutting the city apart like the flash of a sword blade, the golden dome of the Hotel des Invalides, the grinning gargoyles of Notre Dame, the arches and statues and fountains and the long green ribbons that marked the boulevards.
Although the city stood wholly in the sunlight a light haze formed on the rim of the circling horizon.

He now moved the glasses slowly over a segment there and sought diligently for something.