To feel the art of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again. - Henry Adams

The city had the air and movement of hysteria, and the citizens were crying, in every accent of anger and alarm, that the new forces must at any cost be brought under control. Prosperity never before imagined, power never yet wielded by man, speed never reached by anything but a meteor, had made the world irritable, nervous, querulous, unreasonable and afraid.

Nihilism had no bottom. For thousands of years every philosopher had stood on the shore of this sunless sea, diving for pearls and never finding them. All had seen that, since they could not find bottom, they must assume it.

The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as sentiment but as a force; why was she unknown in America?