On this Sunday, the Norman world was celebrating a pretty
church-feast -- the Fete Dieu -- and the streets were filled with
altars to the Virgin, covered with flowers and foliage; the
pavements strewn with paths of leaves and the spring handiwork of
nature; the cathedral densely thronged at mass. The scene was
graceful. The Virgin did not shut her costly Exposition on
Sunday, or any other day, even to American senators who had shut
the St. Louis Exposition to her -- or for her; and a historical
tramp would gladly have offered a candle, or even a candle-stick
in her honor, if she would have taught him her relation with the
deity of the Senators. The power of the Virgin had been plainly
One, embracing all human activity; while the power of the Senate,
or its deity, seemed -- might one say -- to be more or less
ashamed of man and his work. The matter had no great interest as
far as it concerned the somewhat obscure mental processes of
Senators who could probably have given no clearer idea than
priests of the deity they supposed themselves to honor -- if that
was indeed their purpose; but it interested a student of force,
curious to measure its manifestations. Apparently the Virgin --
or her Son -- had no longer the force to build expositions that
one cared to visit, but had the force to close them. The force
was still real, serious, and, at St.
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