Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

by Henry Adams

"Or tost, amis!" fait Nostre Dame,
"Confessies ceste bone fame
Et puis apres tout sans freeur
Recevra tost son sauveeur
Qui char et sanc vout en moi prendre."

"Come quickly, friend!" Our Lady says,
"This good old woman now confess
And afterwards without distress
She will at once receive her God
Who deigned in me take flesh and blood."

After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simple death-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth- century manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony:—

Lors dit une des demoiselles
A madame sainte Marie:
"Encore, dame, n'istra mie
Si com moi semble du cors l'ame."
"Bele fille," fait Nostre Dame,
"Traveiller lais un peu le cors,
Aincois que l'ame en isse hors,
Si que puree soil et nete
Aincois qu'en Paradis la mete.
N'est or mestier qui soions plus,
Ralon nous en ou ciel lassus,
Quant tens en iert bien reviendrons
En paradis l'ame emmerrons."

A maiden said to Saint Marie,
"My lady, still it seems to me
The soul will not the body fly."
"Fair child!" Our Lady made reply,
"Still let awhile the body fight
Before the soul shall leave it quite.
So that it pure may be, and cleansed
When it to Paradise ascends.
No longer need we here remain;
We can go back to heaven again;
We will return before she dies,
And take the soul to paradise."

The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was of a different character, but Mary's interest in death-beds of that kind was small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knew too well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange with the officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. The administration of heaven was very like the administration of France; the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could not wholly approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shut her eyes to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, were for the most part mere evidence of her pity for those who needed it most, and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the siecle, but more commonly the helpless. Every saint performed miracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any one intermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyond these exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to the whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity and the only hope of despair. One might go on for a volume, studying the character of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from the earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles at Lourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied a development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets long ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what was most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous early miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine miracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic material untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain untouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth much money—so much that the rival shrines stole each other's miracles without decency—one does not care to see one's Virgin put to money- making for Jew theatre-managers. One's two-hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors shrink.

For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is that called the "Tombeor de Notre Dame," only recently printed; told by some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any of Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" has had more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only to spoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a glossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm.

The story is that of a tumbler—tombeor, street-acrobat—who was disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for becoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the famous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly been blessed by the Virgin's presence. Ignorant at best, and especially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of a religious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:—

Car n'ot vescu fors de tumer
Et d'espringier et de baler.
Treper, saillir, ice savoit;
Ne d'autre rien il ne savoit;
Car ne savoit autre lecon
Ne "pater noster" ne chancon
Ne le "credo" ne le salu
Ne rien qui fust a son salu.

For he had learned no other thing
Than to tumble, dance and spring:
Leaping and vaulting, that he knew,
But nothing better could he do.
He could not say his prayers by rote;
Not "Pater noster", not a note,
Not "Ave Mary," nor the creed;
Nothing to help his soul in need.