Even in these, our modern days, one finds strange relics of past fashions in thought and opinion. The various political, religious, and ethical forms of belief to be met with in a fortnight's sojourn on the hill, give one a sense of having passed in review a very complete gallery of ancient and modern portraits of men's minds. In time one learns to traverse even a dozen or more centuries with ease. To be in the dawn of the eleventh century in the morning; at high noon to be in the flood-tide of the fifteenth; and, as the sun dipped, to hear the last word of our own dying century—such were the flights across the abysmal depths of time Charm and I took again and again.
One of our chosen haunts was in a certain watch-tower. From its top wall, the loveliest prospect of Mont St. Michel was to be enjoyed. Day after day and sunset after sunset, we sat out the hours there. Again and again the world, as it passed, came and took its seat beside us. Pilgrims of the devout and ardent type would stop, perchance, would proffer a preliminary greeting, would next take their seat along the parapet, and, quite unconsciously, would end by sitting for their portrait. One such sitter, I remember, was clad in carmine crepe shawl; she was bonneted in the shape of a long-ago decade. She had climbed the hill in the morning before dawn, she said; she had knelt in prayer as the sun rose. For hers was a pilgrimage made in fulfilment of a vow. St. Michel had granted her wish, and she in return had brought her prayers to his shrine.
"Ah, mesdames! how good is God! How greatly He rewards a little self-sacrifice. Figure to yourselves the Mont in the early mists, with the sun rising out of the sea and the hills. I was on my knees, up there. I had eaten nothing since yesterday at noon. I was full of the Holy Ghost. When the sun broke at last, it was God Himself in all His glory come down to earth! The whole earth seemed to be listening—prêtait l'oreille—and with the great stillness, and the sea, and the light breaking everywhere, it was as if I were being taken straight up into Paradise. Saint Michel himself must have been supporting me."
The carmine crepe shawl covered a poet, you see, as well as a devotee.
Up yonder, in the little shops and stalls tucked away within the walls of the Barbican, a lively traffic, for many a century now, has been going on in relics and plombs de pèlerinage. Some of these mediaeval impressions have been unearthed in strange localities, in the bed of the Seine, as far away as Paris. Rude and archaic are many of these early essays in the sculptor's art. But they preserve for us, in quaint intensity, the fervor of adoration which possessed that earlier, more devout time and period. On the mind of this nineteenth century pilgrim, the same lovely old forms of belief and superstition were imprinted as are still to be seen in some of those winged figures of St. Michel, with feet securely set on the back of the terrible dragon, staring, with triumphant gaze, through stony or leaden eyes.
On the evening of the pilgrimage our friend, the Parisian, joined us on our high perch. The Mont seemed strangely quiet after the noise and confusion the peasants had brought in their train. The Parisian, like ourselves, had been glad to escape into the upper heights of the wide air, after the bustle and hurry of the day at our inn.
"You permit me, mesdames?" He had lighted his after-dinner cigar; he went on puffing, having gained our consent. He curled a leg comfortably about the railings of a low bridge connecting a house that sprang out of a rock, with the rampart. Below, there was a clean drop of a few hundred feet, more or less. In spite of the glories of a spectacular sunset, yielding ceaseless changes and transformations of cloud and sea tones, the words of Madame Poulard alone had power to possess our companion. She had uttered her protest against the pilgrimage, as she had swept the Parisian's pousse-café from his elbow. He took up the conversation where it had been dropped.
"It is amusing to hear Madame Poulard talk of the priests stopping the pilgrimages! The priests? Why, that's all they have left them to live upon now. These peasants' are the only pockets in which they can fumble nowadays."
"All the same, one can't help being grateful to those peasants," retorted Charm. "They are the only creatures who have made these things seem to have any meaning. How dead it all seems! The abbey, the cloisters, the old prisons, the fortifications, it is like wandering through a splendid tomb!
"Yes, as the curé said yesterday, 'l'âme n'y est plus,'—since the priests have been dislodged, it is the house of the dead."