The little fishing population of Mont St. Michael, and the stories they tell of the dangers of the quicksands, will while away the time in the evening and reward us for staying; and we shall see such an exhibition of hopeless ennui on the part of the French officers in garrison as will not soon be forgotten.
It would require a separate work to describe in detail all the buildings on the rock;[33] (it takes a day to examine the fortifications and dungeons alone); we have therefore only attempted to give the reader an idea of its general aspect; of what M. Nodier, in his 'Annales Romantiques,' describes as 'l'effet poétique et religieux de la flèche du Mont St. Michael;' and indeed we have hardly dared to picture to ourselves the complete magnificence of the basilica of the Archangel, as mariners who approached these shores must have seen it three hundred years ago, with its lofty towers of sculptured stone; and the image of its patron saint, turning towards the western sun a fiery cross of gold.
CHAPTER VIII.
MORTAIN—VIRE—FALAISE.
We now turn our faces towards the east, and starting again from Avranches on our homeward journey, go very leisurely by diligence, through Mortain and Vire to Falaise.
The distance from Avranches to Mortain is not more than twenty miles, and takes nearly five hours; but the country is so beautiful, and the air is so fresh and bracing, that a seat in the banquette of the diligence is one of the most enviable in life. The roof is over-loaded with goods and passengers, which gives a pleasant swaying motion to the vehicle; but the road is so smooth and even that 'nobody cares'—the rocking to and fro is soothing, and sends the driver to sleep, the pieces of string that keep the harness together will hold for another hour or two, and the crazy machine will last our journey at least.
We halt continually on the journey—once, for half-an-hour, literally 'under the lindens'—they are not yet in bloom, but they give out a pleasant perfume into the dreamy air; we are again in the open country, in the atmosphere of old historic Normandy, and bound, slowly it is true, for the birthplace of William the Conqueror; and we can read or sleep at pleasure, as our crazy diligence crawls up and creeps down every hill, and stops at every cottage by the way.
On this beautiful winding road, which is carried along and between, the ridge of hills on which Avranches stands, and commands views westward over the bay to Mont St. Michael and eastward towards Alençon and the plains of Orne, we only meet one or two solitary pedestrians. We are nearly as much alone as in a Swiss pass; the scenery might be part of the Tête Noire, and the Hôtel de la Poste, at Mortain, which is built on the side of a hill over a ravine, and at which our diligence makes a dead stop, might, for many reasons, be a posada on the Italian Alps.
If we stroll out at once, before the evening closes, we shall have time to visit the cemetery on the rocks, to see the remains of a castle of the Norman dukes, and above all, the superb panorama from the heights; and we may wander afterwards into the valleys to see the cascades, the ivy-covered rocks, and the masses of ferns; scenes so exquisite and varied that we are lost in wonder that all these things are to be seen in France at small trouble and cost, and that French artists have hardly ever told us of them.[34]