A WARM MAY NIGHT in Paris, 1903.     A hundred thousand Parisians left their homes in the middle of the night, streaming in crowds toward Saint-Lazare and Montparnasse, the railway stations.    Some hadn’t even gone to sleep, others had set the alarm for an absurd hour, then slipped out of bed, washed noiselessly, and bumped into things searching for their jackets. In some cases whole families set out, but for the most part they were single individuals, often against all logic or good sense. The wives in their beds stretched out their legs into the now-empty part. Parents exchanged a few words, deduced from the discussions of the day before, of the days before, of the weeks before. Words focused on the independence of their children. The father rose from his pillow and looked at the time. Two o’clock.    It was a strange noise because a hundred thousand people at two in the morning are like a stream that flows in an empty bed, the rocks vanished, the pebbles silent. Only water on water. So their voices flowed amid closed shutters, empty streets, and unmoving objects.    A hundred thousand strong, they stormed the stations of Saint-Lazare and Montparnasse because they were afraid they wouldn’t find places in the cars for Versailles. But in the end they all found places. The train left at 2:13.    It’s moving, the train for Versailles.

IN THE GARDENS of the king, grazing in the night, two hundred and twenty-four AUTOMOBILES, frames of iron around piston hearts, for the moment calm, awaited them, motionless on the grass, in a faint odor of oil and glory. They were there to run the great race from Paris to Madrid, down through Europe, from fog to sun.    Let me go and see the dream, the speed, the miracle, don’t stop me with a mournful look, tonight let me live on the edge of the world, just this night, then I will return.    From the gardens of Versailles, Madame, the race of dreams departs, Madame, Panhard-Levassor, seventy horsepower, four cylinders made of perforated steel, like cannons, Madame.    The AUTOMOBILES could get up to a hundred and forty kilometers an hour, kilometers torn from rutted dirt roads, against all logic and good sense, at a time when trains, on the sparkling security of tracks, strained to reach a hundred and twenty. So at the time they were certain—certain—that one couldn’t go faster, humanly speaking. That was the absolute limit, and that was the edge of the world. This explains how it was possible that a hundred thousand people emerged from the station of Versailles at three in the morning on a warm night in May. Let me go and live there, on the edge of the world, just tonight, please, then I will return.    If a single one drove along a country road, they ran at breakneck speed through the grain to see the cloud of dust, and from the backs of the shops rushed like children to see it passing in front of the church, nodding its head yes.    But two hundred and twenty-four all together, this was pure marvel. The fastest, the heaviest, the most famous. They were queens—the AUTOMOBILE was queen, because it hadn’t yet been thought of as a servant, it was born a queen, and the race was her throne, her crown, automobiles did not exist yet, QUEENS existed, come and see them at Versailles on this warm May night, Paris, 1903.