The very last evening of our stay, we chose this as the loveliest light in which to see the last of the hill. On that evening, I remember, the reds and saffrons in the sky were of an astonishing richness. The sea wall, the bastions, the faces of the great rocks, the yellow broom that sprang from the clefts therein, were dyed as in a carmine bath. In that mighty glow of color, all things took on something of their old, their stupendous splendor. The giant walls were paved with brightness. The town, climbing the hill, assumed the proportions of a mighty citadel; the forest tree-tops were prismatic, emerald balls flung beneath the illumined Merveille; and the Cathedral was set in a daffodil frame; its aerial escalier de dentelle, like Jacob's ladder, led one easily heavenward. The circling birds, in the lace-work of the spiral finials, sang their night songs, as the glow in the sky changed, softened, deepened.
This was the world that was in the west.
Toward the east, on the flat surface of the sands, this world cast a strange and wondrous shadow. Jagged rocks, a pyramidal city, a Gothic cathedral in mid-air—behold the rugged outlines of Mont St. Michel carving their giant features on the shifting, sensitive surface of the mirroring sands.
In the little pools and the trickling rivers, the fishermen—from this height, Liliputians grappling with Liliputian meshes—were setting their nets for the night. Across the river-beds, peasant women and fishwives, with bared legs and baskets clasped to their bending backs, appeared and disappeared—shapes that emerged into the light only to vanish into the gulf of the night.
In was in these pictures that we read our answer.
Like Mont St. Michel, so has France carried into the heights of history her glory and her power. On every century, she, like this world in miniature, has also cast her shadow, dwarfing some, illuminating others. And, as on those distant sands the toiling shapes of the fishermen are to be seen, early and late, in summer and winter, so can France point to her people, whose industry and amazing talent for toil have made her, and maintain her, great.
Some of these things we have learned, since, in Normandy Inns, we have sat at meat with her peasants, and have grown to be friends with her fishwives.