DÉJEUNER
The melancholy of the place is terrible. I have seen people of the gayest-hearted natures lean over that parapet and gaze ahead for hours. This great gray plain has a strange attraction. It draws out all that is sad and serious from the very depths of you, forcing you to think deeply, moodily. Joyous thoughts are impossible. At first you imagine that the scenery is colourless; but as you stand and watch for some time, you discover that it is full of colour. There are pearly greens and yellows and mauves, and a kind of phosphorescent slime left by the tide, glistening with all the hues of the rainbow.
Terribly dangerous are these shifting sands. In attempting to cross them you need an experienced guide. The sea mounts very quickly, and mists overtake you unexpectedly. Many assailants of the rock have been swallowed in the treacherous sands.
Being on this great height reminded me of a legend I had heard of the sculptor Gautier, a man of genius, who was shut up in the Abbey of Mont St. Michel and carved stones to keep himself from going mad—you can see these in the abbey to this day. For some slight reason François I. threw the unfortunate sculptor into the black cachot of the Mount, and there he was left in solitude, to die by degrees. His hair became quite white, and hung long over his shoulders; his cheeks were haggard; he grew to look like a ghost. His youth could no longer fight against the despair overhanging him; his miseries were too great for him to bear; he became almost insane. One day, by a miracle, Mass was held, not in the little dark chapel under the crypts, but in the church on high, on the topmost pinnacle of the Mount. It was a Sunday, a fête-day. The sun shone, not feebly, as I saw it that day, but radiantly, the windows of the church glistening. It was blindingly beautiful. The joy of life surrounded him; the sweetness and freshness of the spring was in the air. The irony of men and things was too great for his poor sorrow-laden brain. He cleared the parapet, and was dashed to atoms below. Poor Gautier! It was his only chance of escape. One realized that as one looked up at those immense prison walls, black and frowning, sheer and unscaleable, every window grated and barred. What chance would a prisoner have? If it were possible for him to escape from the prison itself, there would be the town below to pass through. Only one narrow causeway joins the island to the mainland, and all round there is nothing but sea and sandy wastes.
A FARMHOUSE KITCHEN
I was disturbed in my reverie by a loud nasal voice shouting, 'Par ici, messieurs et dames, s'il vous plaît.' It was the guide, and willy-nilly we must go and make the rounds of the abbey among a crowd of other sightseers. An old blind woman on the abbey steps, evidently knowing that we were English by our tread, moistened her lips and drew in her breath in preparation for a begging whine as we approached. We passed through a huge red door of a glorious colour, up a noble flight of wide steps, with hundreds of feet of wall on either side, into a lofty chapel, falling to decay, and being renovated in parts. It was of a ghostly greenish stone, with fluted pillars of colossal height, ending in stained-glass windows and a vaulted roof, about which black-winged bats were flying. Room after room we passed through, the guide making endless and monotonous explanations and observations in a parrot-like voice, until we reached the cloister. This is the pearl of Mont St. Michel, the wonder of wonders. It is a huge square court. In the middle of the quadrangle it is open to the sky, and the sun shines through in a golden blaze. All round are cool dim walks roofed overhead by gray arches supported by small, graceful, rose-coloured pillars in pairs. This is continued round the whole length of the court. Let into the wall are long benches of stone, to which, in olden days, the monks came to meditate and pray. The ancient atmosphere has been well preserved; yet the building is so little touched by time, owing to the careful renovations of a clever architect, that one almost expects at any moment to see a brown-robed monk disturbed in his meditations.
From the quiet courtyard we are taken down into the very heart of the coliseum—into the mysterious cells where the damp of the rock penetrates the solid stone. How gloomy it was down in these crypts! Even the names of them made one tremble—'Galerie de l'Aquilon,' 'Petit Exil,' and 'Grand Exil.' You think of Du Bourg, tightly fettered hand and foot, being eaten alive by rats; of the Comte Grilles, condemned to die of starvation, being fed by a peasant, who bravely climbed to his window; of a hundred gruesome tales. There is the chapel where the last offices of the dead were performed—a cell in which the light struggled painfully through the narrow windows, feebly combating with the dark night of the chamber; and there is the narrow stairway, in the thickness of the wall, by which the bodies of the prisoners were taken.
We were shown the cachot and the oubliette where the living body of the prisoner was attacked by rats. That, however, was a simple torture compared with the strait-jacket and the iron cage. In the oubliette the miserable men could clasp helpless hands, curse or pray, as the case might be; but in the iron cage the death agony was prolonged.