This way of traversing the highroads of France has, I admit, its inconveniences, the most serious of which is the necessity of incessantly watching the map to guide the chauffeur at every fork. The signboard always appears too late, when the machine has already made the wrong turn. The speed of the auto is such that it is not possible to study the map and to enjoy the view at the same time. It is necessary to choose. The wisest plan is to make up your mind to miss the road occasionally. The mistake is so quickly corrected! I also recognize that traveling in an auto will never replace the slow promenade, in which one stopped at every turn of the route, amused by people and by things. But it has the great advantage of annihilating distance, of bringing sites and monuments close to one another, of permitting rapid comparisons without any effort of memory, and of revealing the general characteristics of a whole region. It suits synthetic minds. It repels a little those who have the passion of analysis. In short it makes us acquainted with the forest, but leaves us ignorant of the beauty of the trees.... ***** From Paris to Chantilly there is at first the monotonous plateau which separates the valley of the Marne from that of the Oise. In this gently rolling plain the villages are numerous, and everywhere, overlooking the housetops, rise the pointed or saddle-roofed spires of old belfries. There is not a hamlet of the Ile-de-France which does not possess a precious and exquisite church. It is here, on the soil of the royal domain, that the soul of France was formed. It is here that its national art was born. We will stop, as the luck of the road wills. Louvres formerly possessed two churches: one of them has disappeared and of it there remains only a fine Romanesque belfry; in the other, which shows the somewhat absurd elegance of the fifteenth century, we see a frieze of vine leaves running all around the wall. And behold, at the very first stop, in this petty village, a charming résumé of the whole of French art; a robust Romanesque tower, finished in the first period of pointed Gothic and, beside the gray belfry, the excessive and delightful luxury of flamboyant Gothic. A league farther on, the church of Marly-la-Ville offers a perfect example of the art of the thirteenth century; with its little flying buttresses and its low triforium, one might say that it was the tiny model for a great cathedral. By the side of the road, a poor half-ruined shed, with a broken roof, a hollowed pavement and moldy walls, is the church of Fosses; in its misery and its degradation, the humble nave of the twelfth century still preserves some remnants of its pure beauty....