Louis, had been anxiously
measured in actual money-value.
That it was actual and serious in France as in the Senate
Chamber at Washington, proved itself at once by forcing Adams to
buy an automobile, which was a supreme demonstration because this
was the form of force which Adams most abominated. He had set
aside the summer for study of the Virgin, not as a sentiment but
as a motive power, which had left monuments widely scattered and
not easily reached. The automobile alone could unite them in any
reasonable sequence, and although the force of the automobile,
for the purposes of a commercial traveller, seemed to have no
relation whatever to the force that inspired a Gothic cathedral,
the Virgin in the twelfth century would have guided and
controlled both bag-man and architect, as she controlled the
seeker of history. In his mind the problem offered itself as to
Newton; it was a matter of mutual attraction, and he knew it, in
his own case, to be a formula as precise as s = gt^2/2, if he
could but experimentally prove it. Of the attraction he needed no
proof on his own account; the costs of his automobile were more
than sufficient: but as teacher he needed to speak for others
than himself. For him, the Virgin was an adorable mistress, who
led the automobile and its owner where she would, to her
wonderful palaces and chateaux, from Chartres to Rouen, and
thence to Amiens and Laon, and a score of others, kindly
receiving, amusing, charming and dazzling her lover, as though
she were Aphrodite herself, worth all else that man ever dreamed.
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