Winged Wheels in France

by Michael Myers Shoemaker

Two days of gloom and mist in London, London during the holidays, which means a desert, rendered our return to France doubly agreeable. The sun streams out its light as we enter the harbour at Boulogne, and Jean waves his cap at us while the auto is snorting a welcome.

The important custom-house officials insisted upon examining my bundle of home papers but finding the Enquirer harmless, passed it and we sailed away. Collecting the wash and traps at the windy, disagreeable, and most expensive Hôtel Pavilion Impérial we started off once more, gladly shaking the dust of Boulogne from our wheels. It's a sadly dreary place where indigent English come over to enjoy the risk of gambling at a dead sort of casino,—good church members at home, very pillars of the sanctuary, who gamble like street arabs all the time they are here. Let us leave it and roll off and away into the fair land of France.

The ride to Beauvais proves to be one of the most delightful of the journey. The roads are superb and we meet many autos which, while they add to the danger, also give zest to the sport as they go shrieking past us. Just now we killed one poor dog so suddenly that he never knew what hurt him. Rushing at us from an out-house he got his neck just in the spot for our flying wheels to pass over it, and he never moved after that. It was over in a flash, all his wild rollicking life snuffed out like the flame of a candle. We regretted the accident but could in no way have prevented it.

Skirting the town of Abbeville and leaving Amiens well to our left, we go directly south via Poix, Grandvilliers, and "Marseilles the Little." Once during the afternoon, though the sun shines brilliantly the air becomes suddenly very cold and a short, sharp shower of hail forces us to slow down and draw up the cover. We are moving very rapidly and our momentum added to the force of the hailstones causes us to feel as though suddenly subjected to an assault of the enemy, but it lasts for a moment only, and with top again thrown back, we are speeding onward.

If you would feel the elixir of life and youth pouring into your veins, take such a ride on such a day. There is nothing with which to compare it, save the wild flight of a toboggan. An eagle may know the sensation as he soars through space, but until mortals shall have put on immortality or wings we can know it only in auto cars or toboggans, for I am told that in a balloon one feels no motion unless one falls, and it does not last long even then,—mercifully so.

The ride is superb all the way to Beauvais. It is Easter Sunday, all the villages are rejoicing. Giddy-go-rounds are in full swing, and the Beauvais hotel is occupied by boys from Paris and their best girls, the latter are not above flirting even with an elderly gentleman like myself. The fact that his arm is around her waist and his head on her shoulder does not in the least interfere with her double actions,—she can squeeze his hand while she throws languishing glances at me.

But dinner is over and the old town presents greater attraction to me than these passers-by within her limits. Darkness has come down upon the narrow streets, where, as I wander along, the lamps cast queer shadows under the eaves of the gabled houses. There is a mass of something over there that should be the cathedral, it towers so high into the sky and I pause before it in doubt. Part is Gothic and as the light will permit, I fancy very beautiful. The remainder is evidently a building of another century, certainly of a totally different style of architecture. While I am pondering, a foot-step draws nearer and nearer, the only sound of life in the city, and its owner, a little man, in answer to my question, assures me that this is not the Cathedral, but St. Étienne—a structure as old as the greater church which stands quite on the other side of the town, and "If Monsieur visits it, let him go at noon and ask for the old clock, it is well worth an inspection and very curious."

So he patters off into the silence of the night, and I wander on through street after street until the Cathedral looms up before me. Only a piece of a church, but what a piece, how gigantic! Why, since there would be few if any rivals on the earth, does not the nation complete it to its own glory? It may lose some of its majesty by daylight,—that often happens,—but to-night it is superbly solemn and most majestic, even though but a fragment.

These great religious temples are all in place here in old Europe, but I cannot but think that the erection of a vast cathedral for the Episcopal Church in America is money ill spent and but to gratify vanity. These structures were built when great temples were almost a necessity for the processions of the Church of Rome, but they are of little use, save the choir, for any other purpose even in that church of to-day and, aside from the Cathedral of Westminster in London, the Church of Rome has erected no such structures since that of Orleans.