One morning, as we looked toward Pontorson, a small black cloud appeared to be advancing across the bay. The day was windy; the sky was crowded with huge white mountains—round, luminous clouds that moved in stately sweeps. And the sea was the color one loves to see in an earnest woman's eye, the dark-blue sapphire that turns to blue-gray. This was a setting that made that particular cloud, making such slow progress across from the shore, all the more conspicuous. Gradually, as the black mass neared the dike, it began to break and separate; and we saw plainly enough that the scattering particles were human beings.
It was, in point of fact, a band of pilgrims; a peasant pilgrimage was coming up to the Mont. In wagons, in market carts, in char-à-bancs, in donkey-carts, on the backs of monster Percherons—the pilgrimage moved in slow processional dignity across the dike. Some of the younger black gowns and blue blouses attempted to walk across over the sands; we could see the girls sitting down on the edge of the shore, to take off their shoes and stockings and to tuck up their thick skirts. When they finally started they were like unto so many huge cheeses hoisted on stilts. The bare legs plunged boldly forward, keeping ahead of the slower-moving peasant-lads; the girls' bravery served them till they reached the fringe of the incoming tide; not until their knees went under water did they forego their venture. A higher wave came in, deluging the ones farthest out; and then ensued a scampering toward the dike and a climbing up of the stone embankment. The old route across the sands, that had been the only one known to kings and barons, was not good enough for a modern Norman peasant. The religion of personal comfort has spread even as far as the fields.
At the entrance gate a tremendous hubbub and noise announced the arrival of the pilgrimage. Wagons, carts, horses, and peasants were crowded together as only such a throng is mixed in pilgrimages, wars, and fairs. Women were taking down hoods, unharnessing the horses, fitting slats into outsides of wagons, rolling up blankets, unpacking from the char-à-bancs cooking utensils, children, grain-bags, long columns of bread, and hard-boiled eggs. For the women, darting hither and thither in their blue petticoats, their pink and red kerchiefs, and the stiff white Norman caps, were doing all the work. The men appeared to be decorative adjuncts, plying the Norman's gift of tongue across wagon-wheels and over the back of their vigorous wives and daughters. For them the battle of the day was over; the hour of relaxation had come. The bargains they had made along the route were now to be rehearsed, seasoned with a joke.
"Allons, toi, on ne fait pas de la monnaie blanche comme ca!"
"Je t'ai offert huit sous, tu sais, lapin!"
"Farceur, va-t'en—"
"Come, are you never going to have done fooling?" cried a tan-colored, wide-hipped peasant to her husband, who was lounging against the wagon pole, sporting a sprig of gentian pinned to his blouse. He was fat and handsome; and his eye proclaimed, as he was making it do heavy work at long range at a cluster of girls descending from an antique gig, that the knowledge of the same was known unto him.
"That's right, growl ahead, thou, tes beaux jours sont passés, but for me l'amour, l'amour—que c'est gai, que c'est frais!" he half sung, half shouted.
The moving mass of color, the Breton caps, and the Norman faces, the gold crosses that fell from dented bead necklaces, the worn hooped earrings, the clean bodices and home-spun skirts, streamed out past our windows as we looked down upon them. How pretty were some of the faces, of the younger women particularly! and with what gay spirits they were beginning their day! It had begun the night before, almost; many of the carts had been driven in from the forests beyond Avranches; some of the Brittany groups had started the day before. But what can quench the fountain of French vivacity? To see one's world, surely, there is nothing in that to tire one; it only excites and exhilarates; and so a fair or market day, and above all a pilgrimage, are better than balls, since they come more regularly; they are the peasant's opera, his Piccadilly and Broadway, club, drawing-room, Exchange, and parade, all in one.
A half-hour after a landing of the pilgrims at the outer gates of the fortifications, the hill was swarming with them. The single street of the town was choked with the black gowns and the cobalt-blue blouses. Before these latter took a turn at their devotions they did homage to Bacchus. Crowds of peasants were to be seen seated about the long, narrow inn-tables, lifting huge pewter tankards to bristling beards. Some of these taverns were the same that had fed and sheltered bands of pilgrims that are now mere handfuls of dust in country churchyards. Those sixteenth century pilgrims, how many of them, had found this same arched doorway of La Licorne as cool as the shade of great trees after the long hot climb up to the hill! What a pleasant face has the timbered facade of the Tête d'Or, and the Mouton Blanc, been to the weary-limbed: and how sweet to the dead lips has been the first taste of the acid cider!