In and out of Three Normandy Inns

by Anna Bowman Dodd

There were other dashes of color that made the gray landscape astonishingly brilliant. Some of the peasants on their way to the village fêtes were also caught in the passing shower. They had opened their wide blue and purple umbrellas; these latter made huge disks of color reflected in the glass of the wet macadam. The women had turned their black alpaca and cashmere skirts inside out, tucking the edges about their stout hips; beneath the wide vivid circles of the dripping umbrellas these brilliantly colored under-petticoats showed a liberal revelation of scarlet hose and thick ankles sunk in the freshly polished black sabots. The men's cobalt-blue blouses and their peaked felt hats spotted the landscape with contrasting notes and outlines.

After the last peaked hat had disappeared into the farm enclosures, we and the wet landscape had the rain to ourselves. The trees now were spectral shapes; they could not be relied on as companions. Even the gardens and grain lands were mysteriously veiled, so close rolled the mists to our carriage-wheels. Beyond, at the farthest end of the road, these mists had formed themselves into a solid, compact mass.

The clouds out yonder, far ahead, seemed to be enwrapping some part of earth that had lanced itself into the sky.

After a little the eyes unconsciously watched those distant woolly masses. There was a something beyond, faint, vague, impalpable as yet, which the rolling mists begirt as sometimes they cincture an Alpine needle. Even as the thought came, a sudden lifting—of the gray mass showed the point of a high uplifted pinnacle. The point thereof pricked the sky. Then the wind, like a strong hand, swept the clouds into a mantle, and we saw the strange spectacle no more.

For several miles our way led us through a dim, phantasmal landscape. All the outlines were blurred. Even the rain was a veil; it fell between us and the nearest hedgerows as if it had been a curtain. The jingling of Poulette's bell-collar and the gurgle of the water rushing in the gulleys—these were the only sounds that fell upon the ear.

Still the clouds about that distant mass curled and rolled; they were now breaking, now re-forming—as if some strange and wondrous thing were hanging there—between heaven and earth.

It was still far out, the mass; even the lower mists were not resting on any plain of earth. They also were moved by something that moved beneath them, as a thick cloak takes the shape and motion of the body it covers. Still we advanced, and still the great mountain of cloud grew and grew. And then there came a little lisping, hissing sound. It was the kiss of the sea as it met some unseen shore. And on our cheeks the sea-wind blew, soft and salty to the lips.

The mass was taking shape and outline. The mists rolled along some wide, broad base that rested beneath the sea, and skyward they clasped the apexal point of a pyramid.

This pyramid in the sky was Mont St. Michel.

With its feet in the sea, and its head vanishing into infinity—here, at last, was this rock of rocks, caught, phantom-like, up into the very heavens above.