It is the common habit of hills and mountains, as we all know, to turn disdainful as they grow skyward; they only too eagerly drop, one by one, the things by which man has marked the earth for his own. To stand on a mountain top and to go down to your grave are alike, at least in this—that you have left everything, except yourself, behind you. But it is both the charm and the triumph of Mont St. Michael, that it carries so much of man's handiwork up into the blue fields of the air; this achievement alone would mark it as unique among hills. It appears as if for once man and nature had agreed to work in concert to produce a masterpiece in stone. The hill and the architectural beauties it carries aloft, are like a taunt flung out to sea and to the upper heights of air; for centuries they appear to have been crying aloud, "See what we can do, against your tempests and your futile tides—when we try" … Rustic France along this coast still makes pilgrimages to the shrine of the Archangel St. Michael. No marriage is rightly arranged which does not include a wedding-journey across the "gréve"; no nuptial breakfast is aureoled with the true halo of romance which is eaten elsewhere than on these heights in mid-air. The young come to drink deep of wonders; the old, to refresh the depleted fountains of memory; and the tourist, behold he is a plague of locusts let loose upon the defenseless hill!
It was impossible, after sojourning a certain time upon the hill, not to concede that there were two equally strong centers of attraction that drew the world hitherward. One remained, indeed, gravely suspended between the doubt and the fear, as to which of these potential units had the greater pull, in point of actual attraction. The impartial historian, given to a just weighing of evidence, would have been startled to find how invariably the scales tipped; how lightly an historical Mont, born of a miracle, crowned by the noblest buildings, a pious Mecca for saints and kings innumerable, shot up like feathers in lightness when overweighted by the modern realities of a perfectly appointed inn, the cooking and eating of an omelet of omelets, and the all-conquering charms of Madame Poulard.
The fog of doubt thickened as, day after day, the same scenes were enacted; when one beheld all sorts of conditions of men similarly affected; when, again and again, the potentiality in the human magnet was proved true. Doubt turned to conviction, at the last, that the holy shrine of St. Michael had, in truth, been violated; that the Mont had been desecrated; that the latter exists now solely as a setting for a pearl of an inn; and that within the shrine—it is Madame Poulard herself who fills the niche!…
Such a variety of brides as come up to the Mont! You could have your choice, at the midday meal, of almost any nationality, age, or color. The attempt among these bridal couples to maintain the distant air of a finished indifference only made their secret the more open. The British phlegm, on such a journey, did not always serve as a convenient mask; the flattering, timid glance, the ripple of tender whispers, and the furtive touching of fingers beneath the table, made even these English couples a part of the great human marrying family; their superiority to their fellows would return, doubtless, when the honey had dried out of their moon.
The best of our adventures into this tender country were with the French bridal tourists; they were certain to be delightfully human. As we had had occasion to remark before, they were off, like ourselves, on a little voyage of discovery; they had come to make acquaintance with the being to whom they were mated for life. Various degrees of progress could be read in the air and manner of the hearty young "bourgeoises" and their paler or even ruddier partners, as they crunched their bread or sipped their thin wine. Some had only entered as yet upon the path of inquiry; others had already passed the mile-stone of criticism; and still others had left the earth and were floating in full azure of intoxication. Of the many wedding parties that sat down to breakfast, we soon made the commonplace discovery that the more plebeian the company, the more certain-orbed appeared to be the promise of happiness….
Madame Poulard's air with this, her world, was as full of tact as with the tourists. Many of the older women would give her the Norman kiss, solemnly, as if the salute were a part of the ceremony attendant on the eating of a wedding breakfast at Mont St. Michel. There would be a three times' clapping of the wrinkled or the ruddy peasant cheeks against the sides of Madame Poulard's daintier, more delicately modeled face. Then all would take their seats noisily at the table. It was Madame Poulard who would then bring us news of the party. At the end of a fortnight Charm and I felt ourselves to be in possession of the hidden and secret reasons for all the marrying that had been done along the coast that year….
One morning, as we looked toward Pontorson, a small black cloud appeared to be advancing across the bay. The day was windy; the sky was crowded with huge white mountains—round, luminous clouds that moved in stately sweeps. And the sea was the color one loves to see in an earnest woman's eye, the dark blue sapphire that turns to blue-gray. This was a setting that made that particular cloud, making such slow progress across from the shore, all the more conspicuous. Gradually, as the black mass neared the dike, it began to break and separate; and we saw plainly enough that the scattering particles were human beings.
It was, in point of fact, a band of pilgrims; a peasant pilgrimage was coming up to the Mont. In wagons, in market carts, in "char-á-bancs," in donkey carts, on the backs of monster Percherons—the pilgrimage moved in slow processional dignity across the dike. Some of the younger black gowns and blue blouses attempted to walk across over the sands; we could see the girls sitting down on the edge of the shore, to take off their shoes and stockings and to tuck up their thick skirts. When they finally started they were like unto so many huge cheeses hoisted on stilts. The bare legs plunged boldly forward, keeping ahead of the slower-moving peasant lads; the girls' bravery served them till they reached the fringe of the incoming tide; not until their knees went under water did they forego their venture. A higher wave came in, deluging the ones farthest out; and then ensued a scampering toward the dike and a climbing up of the stone embankment. The old route across the sands, that had been the only one known to kings and barons, was not good enough for a modern Norman peasant. The religion of personal comfort has spread even as far as the fields.
Other aspects of the hill, on this day of the pilgrimage, made those older dead-and-gone bands of pilgrims astonishingly real. On the tops of bastions, in the clefts on the rocks, beneath the glorious walls of La Merveille, or perilously lodged on the crumbling cornice of a tourelle, numerous rude altars had been hastily erected. The crude blues and scarlets of banners were fluttering, like so many pennants, in the light breeze. Beneath the improvised altar-roofs—strips of gay cloth stretched across poles stuck into the ground—were groups not often seen in these less fervent centuries.
High up, mounted on the natural pulpit, formed of a bit of rock, with the rude altar before him with its bits of scarlet cloth covered with cheap lace, stood or knelt the priest. Against the wide blue of the open heaven his figure took on an imposing splendor of mien and an unmodern impressiveness of action. Beneath him knelt, with bowed heads, the groups of the peasant pilgrims; the women, with murmuring lips and clasped hands, their strong, deeply-seamed faces outlined with the precision of a Francesco painting against the gray background of a giant mass of wall or the amazing breadth of a vast sea-view; children, squat and chubby, with bulging cheeks starting from the close-fitting French "bonnet"; and the peasant-farmers, mostly of the older varieties, whose stiffened or rheumatic knees and knotty hands made their kneeling real acts of devotional zeal.