“A regular collection of infirmities,” I said, bursting into a loud laugh.
“Hum!” rejoined Lerne, “in other respects the motor-car is better off than we. Think how the water cools it; what a remedy against fever! And then what a time the engine can last, if it is wisely used! It can be mended indefinitely—it can always be cured; have you not just restored speech to its maw? You could replace an eye just as easily!”
The Professor was getting excited:
“It’s a powerful and terrible body,” he cried, “but a body that allows itself to be clothed—it has armor which increases the power of the wearer beyond all expectation, a cuirass that multiplies its force and speed. Why, you inside it are like the Maritans of Mr. Wells in their tripod cylinders! You are nothing but the brain of an artificial monster that it makes one giddy to think of.”
“All machines are like that, uncle.”
“No. Not so completely. But for the form (which no animal resembles of course) the automobile is the most congruous automaton ever contrived. It is more made in our image than the best mannikin wound up by a key, the most human of puppets. For under their anthropomorphic envelope those mannikins hide a mere roasting-jack organism, which one would not compare with the anatomy of a snail. Whereas here....”
He drew back a step and regarded my car with a look of tenderness:
“What a superb creature,” he exclaimed, “and how great is man!”
“Yes,” said I to myself, “there is a deal more beauty in a thing we create, than in all your sinister joining of flesh and wood that are both from of old. But it’s not bad on your part to have admitted it.”
Though it was late, I went on to Grey-l’Abbaye to replenish my stock of petrol, and though he was a creature of routine, Lerne, infatuated with automobilism, passed beyond the traditional limit of his walks and insisted on accompanying me.