Henry is infatuated with the Paris Exposition of 1900, which opens on April 15 and runs through the month of November. He has been studying Gothic architecture since 1895, foreshadowing his historical and philosophical meditation, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, privately printed in 1904. During the summer of 1900, he is also reading medieval philosophy. Even with temperatures in the nineties, Henry enjoys this summer in Paris. In July, he writes to Elizabeth Cameron that Thomas Aquinas serves as “liquid air for cooling” his heated blood. Always interested in contrasts and dichotomy, Henry begins to speculate about the medieval strength of Christianity and how it relates to the twentieth-century power generated when mechanical energy produces electricity; this theme will captivate him for the rest of his active intellectual life. In late 1900 or early 1901, he writes a long poem, “Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres,” which includes a section titled “Prayer to the Dynamo.”
