MONT ST. MICHEL
The road to Mont St. Michel is colourless and dreary. On either side
are flat gray marshes, with little patches of scrubby grass. Here and
there a few sheep are grazing. How the poor beasts can find anything
to eat at all on such barren land is a marvel. Gradually the scenery
becomes drearier, until at last you are driving on a narrow causeway,
with a river on one side and a wilderness of treacherous sand on the
other.
Suddenly, on turning a corner, you come within view of Mont St.
Michel. No matter how well prepared you may be for the apparition, no
matter what descriptions you may have read or heard beforehand, when
you see that three-cornered mass of stone rising from out the vast
wilderness of sand, you cannot but be astonished and overwhelmed. You
are tempted to attribute this bizarre achievement to the hand of the
magician. It is uncanny.
Just now it is low tide, and the Mount lies in the midst of an
immense moving plain, on which three rivers twist, like narrow threads
intersecting it--Le Conesnon, La Sée, and La Seline. Several dark
islands lie here and there uncovered, and groups of small boats are
left high and dry. It is fascinating to watch the sea coming up,
appearing like a circle on the horizon, and slipping gently over the
sands, the circle ever narrowing, until the islands are covered once
more, the boats float at anchor, and the waves precipitate themselves
with a loud booming sound, heard for miles round, against the double
walls that protect the sacred Mount.
Many are the praises that have been sung of Mont St. Michel by poets
and artists, by historians and architects. She has been called 'A poem
in stone,' 'Le palais des angles,' 'An inspiration of the Divine,' 'La
cité des livres,' 'Le boulevard de la France,' 'The sacred mount,'
etc. Normandy and Brittany dispute her. She is in the possession of
either, as you will.
[Illustration: SOUPE MAIGRE]
Mont St. Michel is not unlike Gibraltar. As you come suddenly upon the
place, rising from out the misty grayish-yellow, low-lying marshes, it
appears to be a dark three-cornered mass, surrounded by stout brownish
battlemented walls, flanked by rounded turrets, against a
background of blue sky. At the base of the Mount lies the city, the
houses built steeply one above the other, some with brownish
lichen-covered roofs, others of modern slate. Above the city is the
monastery--brown walls, angry and formidable, rising steeply, with
many windows and huge buttresses. Beyond, on the topmost point, is the
grand basilica consecrated to the archangel, the greenish light of
whose windows you can see clearly. Above all rises a tall gray spire
culminating in a golden figure.
There is only one entrance to Mont St. Michel--over a footbridge and
beneath a solid stone archway, from which the figure of the Virgin in
a niche looks down. You find yourself in a narrow, steep street, black
and dark with age, and crowded with shops and bazaars and cafés. The
town appears to be given up to the amusement and entertainment of
visitors; and, as St. Michael is the guardian saint of all strangers
and pilgrims, I suppose this is appropriate. Tourists fill the streets
and overflow the hotels and cafés; the town seems to live, thrive, and
have its being entirely for the tourists. Outside every house hangs a
sign advertising coffee or china or curios, as the case may be, and
so narrow is the street that the signs on either side meet.
Your first thought on arriving is about getting something to eat. The
journey from St. Malo is long, and, although the sun is shining and
the sky is azure blue, the air is biting. Of course, everyone who
comes to the Mount has heard of Mme. Poulard. She is as distinctly an
institution as the very walls and fortresses. All know of her famous
coffee and delicious omelettes; all have heard of her charm. It is
quite an open question whether the people flock there in hundreds on a
Sunday morning for the sake of Mme. Poulard's luncheon or for the
attractions of Mont St. Michel itself. There she stands in the doorway
of her hotel, smiling, gracious, affable, handsome. No one has ever
seen Mme. Poulard ruffled or put out. However many unexpected visitors
may arrive, she greets them all with a smile and words of welcome.
We were amid a very large stream of guests; yet she showed us into her
great roomy kitchen, and seated us before the huge fireplace, where a
brace of chickens, steaming on a spit, were being continually basted
with butter by stout, gray-haired M. Poulard. She found time to
inquire about our journey and our programme for the day, and directed
us to the various show-places of the Mount.
There is only one street of any importance in Mont St. Michel, dark
and dim, very narrow, no wider than a yard and a half; a drain runs
down the middle. Here you find yourself in an absolute wilderness of
Poulard. You are puzzled by the variety and the relations of the
Poulards. Poulard greets you everywhere, written in large black
letters on a white ground.
If you mount some steps and turn a corner suddenly, Poulard _frère_
greets you; if you go for a harmless walk on the ramparts, the
renowned coffee of Poulard _veuve_ hits you in the face. Each one
strives to be the right and only Poulard. You struggle to detach
yourselves from these Poulards. You go through a fine mediæval
archway, past shops where valueless, foolish curios are for sale; you
scramble up picturesque steps, only to be told once more in glaring
letters that POULARD spells Poulard.
A very picturesque street is the main thoroughfare of Mont St. Michel,
mounting higher and higher, with tall gray-stone and wooden houses on
either side, the roofs of which often meet overhead. Each window has
its pots of geraniums and its show of curios and useless baubles.
Fish-baskets hang on either side of the doors. Some of the houses have
terrace gardens, small bits of level places cut into the rock, where
roses grow and trailing clematis. Ivy mainly runs riot over every
stone and rock and available wall. The houses are built into the solid
rock one above another, and many of them retain their air of the
fourteenth or the fifteenth century.
You pass a church of Jeanne d'Arc. A bronze statue of the saint stands
outside the door. One always goes upwards in Mont St. Michel, seeing
the dark purplish-pink mass of the grand old church above you, with
its many spires of sculptured stone. Stone steps lead to the ramparts.
Here you can lean over the balustrade and look down upon the waste of
sand surrounding Mont St. Michel. All is absolutely calm and
noiseless. Immediately below is the town, its clusters of new
gray-slate roofs mingling with those covered in yellow lichen and
green moss; also the church of the village, looking like a child's
plaything perched on the mountain-side. Beyond and all around lies a
sad, monotonous stretch of pearl-gray sand, with only a darkish,
narrow strip of land between it and the leaden sky--the coast of
Normandy. Sea-birds passing over the country give forth a doleful
wail. The only signs of humanity at all in the immensity of this great
plain are some little black specks--men and women searching for
shellfish, delving in the sand and trying to earn a livelihood in the
forbidding waste.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
Even now, although the poor souls took wings long ago, the cachot and
the oubliette fill you with disgust. You feel stifled there. The
atmosphere is vitiated. Even though centuries have passed since those
terrible times, the walls seem to be still charged with iniquity, with
all the sighs exhaled, with all the smothered cries, with all the
tears, with all the curses of impatient sufferers, with all the
prayers of saints.
It seems impossible to believe, down in the heart of this world of
stone, in the impenetrable darkness, that the architect that designed
this thick and cruel masonry constructed those airy belfries, those
balustrades of lace, those graceful arches, those towers and minarets.
It is as if he had wished to shut up the sorrow and the maniacal cries
of the men who had lost their reason in a fair exterior, attracting
the eyes of the world to that which was beautiful, and making it
forget the misery beneath.
[Illustration: MARIE]
[Illustration: A FARM LABOURER]