Mont St. Michel, pinnacle on pinnacle, rises directly before us five hundred feet into the blue sky and becomes more and more distinct as we approach until we finally reach a stand-still with the nose of our auto poked against—a blank wall. Where to now? Above rises the wall with no sign of a gate, and on either side and below us stretch the wet sands,—no thoroughfare there surely. However, over an elevated foot-bridge come a man and a woman, the former covers up the auto, while the latter assures us that the Hôtel Poulard Âiné is the only place for a gentleman to breakfast, a statement which causes high words with the runner of another house who arrives a moment late. But "Madame" carries the day and we follow her over the foot-bridge which the high tides cover, and rounding a corner pass under a gateway and into the quaintest spot in France. The way is narrow and steep, disappearing upwards under a second gateway, but our guide turns us promptly into a great kitchen with a bell above its entrance clanging for the meal about to be served. One finds these kitchens in France, but I have no memory of them elsewhere. Always spotlessly clean, the walls hung with shining copper utensils, while the cook, in snowy cap and apron, turns the spit where some fowls are roasting before a roaring fire, whose glow is most acceptable after our swift ride through the air. These cooks are personages in France and the proper making of an omelette an affair of State, as it were. This man greets us with a salutation so magnificent that I return it in kind as nearly as I know how—but feel that I fall short.
MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FROM THE SOUTH
By permission of Messrs. Neurdein
Every house in St. Michel climbs up the rocks. This one climbs high and I must mount four flights of stairs to find the lavatories. As for a lift, Mont St. Michel permits no such desecration of her ancient usages. If you come here you will use the legs God gave you.
After breakfast, which by the way was excellent, I descend to the street with the intention of exploring the place alone, but I reckon without my host, who, in this instance, proves to be the old lady who met us on arrival. She waves aside my gentle remonstrance, tells me that I may never come again and had best see it all, and no one can do as well for me as herself. I yield perforce, also because of her cheery old face; God bless her! I have no doubt but that she is a good mother to some one. So I start, Yama and Jean following closely. The latter will fully appreciate all he sees, but the former will not know any more two hours hence than he does now. But let him come; as my instructor in German used to say when I could not remember the dative case, that she should continue to pour it into one ear in the hopes that some of it would stick before it passed out of the other. I think she was wrong, for I never knew how I got into that case and was always at a loss as to how I was to get out.
The old lady mounts to the lower battlements and begins her story. Her French is so distinct and so slowly spoken that all must understand her. She should command a high salary in some school at home. One could not help but learn even without studying. So she rolls out the history of the celebrated spot until we reach the portals of the fortress, a lofty donjon flanked by two projecting turrets. There she must consign us to its custodian, cheerily housed with his family in the great guard-room, and under his guidance we mount the wide and stately staircase of the Abbots, and for another hour wander through gallery after gallery, crypt over crypt, here in a donjon in the rock, and there in a prison spacious and cheerful. From every casement glimpses of the beautiful panorama without greet one's eyes, but the full glory of that is reserved until, having mounted five hundred steps, we emerge upon a platform where stands the Cathedral, lifted far above the sins of the earth, a fitting place for the worship of God. Gazing downward one sees the fair land of Normandy to the left, while Brittany stretches away to the right and the glistening waters of the English Channel are behind one. The sunlight comes in long rays through the cloud rifts and the land sparkles and the sea dances where it strikes far out towards England.
High above us rise the pinnacles of the Cathedral, while on the topmost point of its Gothic spire the gilded statue of St. Michael seems to shout his hosannas upwards far towards the blue of heaven.
The wind is strong and fresh and full of life, for this is spring, and the world rejoices; this is Holy Week with its divine resurrection and its hope for all men! Lilies and apple blossoms deck these altars, while in far off New Zealand autumn leaves will crown this festival. How strange a circumstance!
There may be those in Europe and America who do not know the history of this famous spot, but it has been so often described that there can be but few so uninformed, and I fancy that its picture is certainly known to all.—A conical rock rising from the sands close to the sea and covered by houses, abbeys, and fortresses with the whole capped by a great Cathedral, which flings its gilded statue of St. Michael five hundred feet into the air where, on the apex of the delicate spire, it seems, especially on a cloudy day when the support is invisible, to float in the air.