Yesterday the master drove us from Paris to Rouen. This morning he left
me, having first taken me outside the gates of the old, many-steepled
city. There I was, alone with the dreadful hippogriff; alone in the open
country, the horizon of immaculate blue on the left, on the right still
faintly pink; alone on the desolate road that winds between oceans of
corn, with islands of trees that turn into blue in the distance.
I am many miles from a station, far from garage or repairers. And at
first I am conscious of a vague uneasiness, that is not without its
charm. I am at the mercy of this mysterious force, that is yet more
logical than I. A caprice of its hidden life--one of those caprices
that, mysterious as they may seem to us, are yet never wrong, and put
our arrogant reason to shame--and I should be solitary in this
illimitable vastness of green, chained to the enigmatic mass that my
arms cannot move. But the monster, I say to myself, has no secrets that
I have not learned. Before placing myself in its power, I took it to
pieces, and examined its organs. And, now that it snorts at my feet, I
can recall its physiology. I know its infallible wheelwork, its delicate
points; I have studied its infantile maladies, and learned what diseases
are fatal. I have had its heart and soul laid bare, I have looked into
the profound circulation of its life. Its soul is the electric spark,
which, seven or eight hundred times to the minute, sends fiery breath
through the veins. And the terrible, complex heart is composed, first of
all, of the carburetter, with its strange double face: the carburetter,
which prepares, proportions and volatilizes the petrol--subtle fairy
that has slumbered ever since the world began, and is now recalled to
power, and united to the air that has torn her from sleep. This
redoubtable mixture is eagerly swallowed by the mighty viscera close by,
which contain the explosion chamber, the piston, all the live force of
the motor. And around these, which form one mass of flame, pure water
circulates always, restraining the passionate ardour that else would
devour them and turn them into a flow of lava, calming with its long and
icy caress the mortal frenzy of toil--vigilant, untiring water, that the
radiator posted in front of the car keeps cool, and freshens with all
the sweetness of valley and plain. Next comes the trembler-blade which
governs the spark, and is in its turn controlled by the movement of the
motor. The soul obeys what is properly the body, and the body, in most
ingenious harmony, obeys the soul. But so strangely elastic is this
preordained harmony that it is open to a more independent or more
intelligent will--that of the driver, which stands here for the will of
the gods--to improve still further this admirable equilibrium of two
alien forces; and by means of the "advance ignition" lever, to
precipitate the spark at the moment that the accidental aid or
resistance of the road may render most favourable.