It loomed out of the spectral landscape—itself the superlative spectre; it took its flight upward as might some genius of beauty enrobed in a shroud of mystery.
Such has it been to generations of men. Beautiful, remote, mysterious! With its altars and its shrines, its miracle of stone carved by man on those other stones hewn by the wind and the tempest, Mont St. Michel has ever been far more a part of heaven than a thing of earth.
Then, for us, the clouds suddenly lifted, as, for modern generations of men, the mists of superstition have also rolled themselves away.
MONT ST. MICHEL:
AN INN ON A ROCK.
[Illustration: MONT SAINT MICHEL]
CHAPTER XXIX.
BY SEA TO THE POULARD INN.
We were being tossed in the air like so many balls. A Normandy char a banc was proving itself no respecter of nice distinctions in conditions in life. It phlipped, dashed, and rolled us about with no more concern than if it were taking us to market to be sold by the pound. For we were on the grève. The promised rivers were before us.
So was the Mont, spectral no longer, but nearing with every plunge forward of our sturdy young Percheron. Locomotion through any new or untried medium is certain to bring with the experiment a dash of elation. Now, driving through water appears to be no longer the fashion in our fastidious century; someone might get a wetting, possibly, has been the conclusion of the prudent. And thus a very innocent and exciting bit of fun has been gradually relegated among the lost arts of pleasure.