"Oh, not much. There's to be a wedding tomorrow and a pilgrimage the next day. Madame Poulard has only a handful as yet. Ces dames descend doubtless at Madame Poulard's—celle qui fait les omelettes?" The ladies were ignorant as yet of the accomplishments of the said landlady; they had only heard of her beauty.

"C'est elle," gravely chorussed the guide and the driver, both nodding their heads as their eyes met. "Fameuse, sa beaute, comme son omelette," as gravely added our driver.

The beauty of this lady and the fame of her omelette were very sobering, apparently, in their effects on the mind; for neither guide nor driver had another word to say.

Still the guide plunged into the rivers, and Fend l'Air followed him. Our cart still pitched and tossed—we were still rocked about in our rough cradle. But the sun, now freed from the banks of clouds, was lighting our way with a great and sudden glory. And for the rest of our watery journey we were conscious only of that lighting. Behind the Mont, lay a vast sea of saffron. But it was in the sky; against it the great rock was as black as if the night were upon it. Here and there, through the curve of a flying buttress, or the apertures of a pierced parapet, gay bits of this yellow world were caught and framed. The sea lay beneath like a quiet carpet; and over this carpet ships and sloops swam with easy gliding motion, with sails and cordage dipped in gold. The smaller craft, moored close to shore, seemed transfigured as in a fog of gold. And nearer still were the brown walls of the Mont making a great shadow, and in the shadow the waters were as black as the skin of an African. In the shoals there were lovely masses of turquoise and palest green; for here and there a cloudlet passed, to mirror their complexions in the translucent pools.

But Fend l'Air's hoofs had struck a familiar note. His iron shoes were clicking along the macadam of the dike. There was a rapid dashing beneath the great walls; a sudden night of darkness as we plunged through an open archway into a narrow village street; a confused impression of houses built into side-walls; of machicolated gateways; of rocks and roof-tops tumbling about our ears; and within the street was sounding the babel of a shrieking troop of men and women. Porters, peasants, lads, and children were clamoring about our cart-wheels like unto so many jackals. The bedlam did not cease as we stopped before a wide, brightly-lit open doorway.

Then through the doorway there came a tall, finely-featured brunette. She made her way through the yelling crowd as a duchess might cleave a path through a rabble. She was at the side of the cart in an instant. She gave us a bow and smile that were both a welcome and an act of appropriation. She held out a firm, soft, brown hand. When it closed on our own, we knew it to be the grasp of a friend, and the clasp of one who knew how to hold her world. But when she spoke the words were all of velvet, and her voice had the cadence of a caress.

"I have been watching you, cheres dames—crossing the greve—but how wet and weary you must be! Come in by the fire, it is ablaze now—I have been feeding it for you!" And once more the beautifully curved lips parted over the fine teeth, and the exceeding brightness of the dark eyes smiled and glittered in our own. The caressing voice still led us forward, into the great gay kitchen; the touch of skilful, discreet fingers undid wet cloaks and wraps; the soft charm of a lovely and gracious woman made even the penetrating warmth of the huge fire-logs a secondary feature of our welcome. To those who have never crossed a greve; who have had no jolting in a Normandy char-a-banc; who, for hours, have not known the mixed pleasures and discomfort of being a part of sea-rivers; and who have not been met at the threshold of an Inn on a Rock by the smiling welcome of Madame Poulard—all such have yet a pleasant page to read in the book of travelled experience.

Meanwhile somewhere, in an inner room, things sweet to the nostrils were cooking. Maids were tripping up and down stairs with covered dishes; there was the pleasant clicking in the ear of the lids of things; dishes or pans or jars were being lifted. And more delicious to the ear than even the promise to starving mouths of food, and of red wine to the lip, was the continuing music of madame's voice, as she stood over us purring with content at seeing her travellers drying and being thoroughly warmed. "The dinner-bell must soon be rung, dear ladies; I delayed it as long as I dared—I gauged your progress across from the terrace—I have kept all my people waiting; for your first dinner here must be hot! But now it rings! Shall I conduct you to your rooms?"

I have no doubt that, even without this brunette beauty, with her olive cheek and her comely figure as guides, we should have gone the way she took us in a sort of daze. One cannot pass under machicolated gateways; rustle between the walls of fourteenth century fortifications; climb a stone stairway that begins in a watch-tower and ends in a rampart, with a great sea view, and with the breadth of all the land shoreward; walk calmly over the top of a king's gate, with the arms of a bishop and the shrine of the Virgin beneath one's feet; and then, presently, begin to climb the side of a rock in which rude stone steps have been cut, till one lands on a miniature terrace, to find a preposterously sturdy-looking house affixed to a ridiculous ledge of rock that has the presumption to give shelter to a hundred or more travellers—ground enough, also, for rows of plane-trees, for honeysuckles, and rose-vine, with a full coquettish equipment of little tables and iron chairs—no such journey as that up a rock was ever taken with entirely sober eyes.

Although her people were waiting below, and the dinner was on its way to the cloth, Madame Poulard had plenty of time to give to the beauty about her. How fine was the outlook from the top of the ramparts! What a fresh sensation, this, of standing on a terrace in mid-air and looking down on the sea, and across to the level shores! The rose-vines—we found them sweet—tiens—one of the branches had fallen—she had full time to re-adjust the loosened support. And "Marianne, give these ladies their hot water, and see to their bags—" even this order was given with courtesy. It was only when the supple, agile figure had left us to fly down the steep rock-cut steps; when it shot over the top of the gateway and slid with the grace of a lizard into the street far below us, that we were made sensible of there having been any especial need of madame's being in haste.

That night, some three hours later, a picturesque group was assembled about this same supple figure. A pretty, and unlooked-for ceremony was about to take place.

It was the ceremony of the lighting of the lanterns.

In the great kitchen, in the dance of the firelight and the glow of the lamps, some seven or eight of us were being equipped with Chinese lanterns. This of itself was an engaging sight. Madame Poulard was always gay at this performance—for it meant much innocent merriment among her guests, and with the lighting of the last lantern, her own day was done. So the brilliant eyes flashed with a fresh fire, and the olive cheek glowed anew. All the men and women laughed as children sputter laughter, when they are both pleased and yet a little ashamed to show their pleasure. It was so very ridiculous, this journey up a rock with a Chinese lantern! But just because it was ridiculous, it was also delightful. One—two—three—seven—eight—they were all lit. The last male guest had touched his cap to madame, exchanging the "bonne nuit" a man only gives to a pretty woman, and that which a woman returns who feels that her beauty has received its just meed of homage; madame's figure stood, still smiling, a radiant benedictory presence, in the doorway, with the great glow of the firelight behind her; the last laugh echoed down the street—and behold, darkness was upon us! The street was as black as a cavern. The strip of sky and the stars above seemed almost day, by contrast. The great arch of the Porte du Roi engulphed us, and then, slowly groping our way, we toiled up the steps to the open ramparts. Here the keen night air swept rudely through our cloaks and garments; the sea tossed beneath the bastions like some restless tethered creature, that showed now a gray and now a purple coat, and the stars were gold balls that might drop at any instant, so near they were. The men shivered and buttoned their coats, and the women laughed, a trifle shrilly, as they grasped the floating burnous closer about their faces and shoulders.

And the lanterns' beams danced a strange dance on the stone flagging.

Once more we were lost in darkness. We were passing through the old guard-house. And then slowly, more slowly than ever, the lanterns were climbing the steps cut in the rock. Hands groped in the blackness to catch hold of the iron railing; the laughter had turned into little shouts and gasps for help. And then one of the lanterns played a treacherous trick; it showed the backs of two figures groping upward together—about one of the girlish figures a man's arm was flung. As suddenly the noise of the cries was stilled.

The lanterns played their fitful light on still other objects. They illumined now a vivid yellow shrub; they danced upon a roof-top; they flooded, with a sudden circlet of brilliance, the awful depths below of the swirling waters and of rocks that were black as a bottomless pit.

Then the terrace was reached. And the lanterns danced a last gay little dance among the roses and the vines before, Pouffe! Pouffe! and behold! they were all blown out.

Thus it was we went to bed on the Mont.



CHAPTER XXX.

AN HISTORICAL OMELETTE—THE PILGRIMS AND THE SHRINE.

To awake on a hill-top at sea. This was what morning brought.

Crowd this hill with houses plastered to the sides of rocks, with great walls girdling it, with tiny gardens lodged in crevices, and with a forest tumbling seaward. Let this hill yield you a town in which to walk, with a street of many-storied houses; with other promenades along ramparts as broad as church aisles; with dungeons, cloisters, halls, guard-rooms, abbatial gateways, and a cathedral whose flying buttresses seemed to spring from mid-air and to end in a cloud—such was the world into which we awoke on the heights of Mont St. Michel.

The verdict of the shore on the hill had been a just one; this world on a rock was a world apart. This hill in the sea had a detached air—as if, though French, at heart a true Gaul, it had had from the beginning of things a life of adventure peculiar to itself. The shore, at best, had been only a foster-mother; the hill was the true child of the sea. Since its birth it has had a more or less enforced separateness, in experience, from the country to which it belonged. Whether temple or fortress, whether forest-clad in virginal fierceness of aspect, or subdued into beauty by the touch of man's chisel, its destiny has ever been the same—to suffice unto itself—to be, in a word, a world in miniature.

The Mont proved by its appearance its history in adventure; it had the grim, grave, battered look that comes only to features, whether of rock or of more plastic human mould—that have been carved by the rough handling of experience.

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. Michel, that it carries so much of man's handiwork up into the blue fields of 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."

On that particular morning, the taunt seemed more like an epithalamium—such marriage-lines did sea and sky appear to be reading over the glistening face of the rock. June had pitched its tent of blue across the seas; all the world was blue, except where the sun smote it into gold. To eyes in love with beauty, what a world at one's feet! Beneath that azure roof, toward the west, was the world of water, curling, dimpling, like some human thing charged with the conscious joy of dancing in the sun. Shoreward, the more stable earth was in the Moslem's ideal posture—that of perpetual prostration. The Brittany coast was a long, flat, green band; the rocks of Cancale were brown, but scarcely higher in point of elevation than the sand-hills; the Normandy forests and orchards were rippling lines that focussed into the spiral of the Avranches cathedral spires: floating between the two blues, hung the aerial shapes of the Chaunsey and the Channel Islands; and nearer, along the coast-line, were the fringing edges of the shore, broken with shoals and shallows—earth's fingers, as it were, touching the sea—playing, as Coleridge's Abyssinian maid fingered the dulcimer, that music that haunts the poet's ear.

We were seated at the little iron tables, on the terrace. We were sipping our morning coffee, beneath the plane-trees. The terrace, a foot beyond our coffee-cups, instantly began its true career as a precipice. We, ourselves, seemed to have begun as suddenly our own flight heavenward—on such astonishing terms of intimacy were we with the sky. The clapping close to our ears of large-winged birds; the swirling of the circling sea-gulls; the amazing nearness of the cloud drapery—all this gave us the sense of being in a new world, and of its being a strangely pleasant one.

Suddenly a cock's crow, shrill and clear, made us start from the luxurious languor of our contentment; for we had scarcely looked to find poultry on this Hill of Surprises. Turning in the direction of the homely, familiar note, we beheld a garden. In this garden walked the cock—a two-legged gentleman of gorgeous plumage. If abroad for purely constitutional purposes, the crowing chanticleer must be forced to pass the same objects many times in review. Of all infinitesimal, microscopic gardens, this one, surely, was a model in minuteness. Yet it was an entirely self-respecting little garden. It was not much larger than a generous-sized pocket handkerchief; yet how much talent—for growing—may be hidden in a yard of soil—if the soil have the right virtue in it. Here were two rocks forming, with a fringe of cliff, a triangle; in that tri-cornered bit of earth a lively crop of growing vegetables was offering flattering signs of promise to the owner's eye. Where all land runs aslant, as all land does on this Mont, not an inch was to be wasted; up the rocks peach and pear-split trees were made to climb—and why should they not, since everything else—since man himself must climb from the moment he touches the base of the hill?

Following the cock's call, came the droning sweetness of bees; the rose and the honeysuckle vines were loading the morning air with the perfume of their invitations. Then a human voice drowned the bees' whirring, and a face as fresh and as smiling as the day stood beside us. It was the voice and the face of Madame Poulard, on the round of her morning inspections. Our table and the radiant world at her feet were included in this, her line of observations.

"Ah, mesdames, comme vous savez bien vous placer!—how admirably you understand how to place yourselves! Under such a sky as this—before such a spectacle—one should be in the front row, as at a theatre!"

And that was the beginning of our deeds finding favor in the eyes of Madame Poulard.

It was our happy fate to drink many a morning cup of coffee at those little iron tables; to have many a prolonged chat with the charming landlady of the famous inn; to become as familiar with the glories and splendors of the historical hill as with the habits and customs of the world that came up to view them.

For here our journey was to end.

The comedy of life, as it had played itself out in Normandy inns, was here, in this Inn on a Rock, to give us a series of farewell performances. On no other stage, we were agreed, could the versatile French character have had as admirable and picturesque a setting; and surely, on no other bit of French soil could such an astonishing and amazing variety of types be assembled for a final appearance, as came up, day after day, to make the tour of the Mont.

To the shore, and for the whole of the near-lying Breton and Norman rustic world, the Mont is still the Hill of Delight. It is their Alp, their shrine, the tenth wonder of the world, a prison, a palace, and a temple still. In spite of Parisian changes in religious fashions, the blouse is still devout; for curiosity is the true religion of the provincial, and all love of adventure did not die out with the Crusades.

Therefore it is that 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 greve; 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 as a plague of locusts let loose upon the defenceless hill!

After a fortnight's sojourn, Charm and I held many a grave consultation; close observation of this world that climbed the heights had bred certain strange misgivings. What was it this world of sight-seers came up to the Mont for to see? Was it to behold the great glories thereof, or was it, oh, human eye of man! to look on the face of a charming woman I It was impossible, after sojourning a certain time upon the hill, not to concede that there were two equally strong centres of attractions, that drew the world hither-ward. 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 over-weighted by the modern realities of a perfectly appointed inn, the cooking and eating of an omelette of omelettes, 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 and 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!

The pilgrims come from darkest Africa and the sunlit Yosemite, but they remain to pray at the Inn of the Omelette. Yonder, on the greves, as we ourselves had proved, one crosses the far seas and one is wet to the skin, only to hear the praises sung of madame's skill in the handling of eggs in a pan; it is for this the lean guide strides before the pilgrim tourist, and that he dippeth his trident in the waters. At the great gates of the fortifications the pilgrim descends, and behold, a howling chorus of serving-people take up the chant of: "Chez Madame Poulard, a gauche, a la renommee de l'omelette!" The inner walls of the town lend themselves to their last and best estate, that of proclaiming the glory of "L'Omelette." Placards, rich in indicative illustrations of hands all forefingers, point, with a directness never vouchsafed the sinner eager to find the way to right and duty, to the inn of "L'Incomparable, la Fameuse Omelette!" The pilgrims meekly descend at that shrine. They bow low to the worker of the modern miracle; they pass with eager, trembling foot, into the inner sanctorum, to the kitchen, where the presiding deity receives them with the grace of a queen and the simplicity of a saint.

Life on the Mont, as we soon found, resolved itself into this—into so arranging one's day as to be on hand for the great, the eventful hour. In point of fact there were two such hours in the Mont St. Michel day. There was the hour of the cooking of the omelette. There was always the other really more tragic hour, of the coming across the dike, of the huge lumbering omnibuses. For you see, that although one may be beautiful enough to compete successfully against dead-and-gone saints, against worn out miracles, and wonders in stone, human nature, when it is alive, is human nature still. It is the curse of success, the world over, to arouse jealousy; and we all have lived long enough to know that jealousy's evil-browed offspring are named Hate and Competition. Up yonder, beyond the Porte du Roi, rivalry has set up a counter-shrine, with a competing saint, with all the hateful accessories of a pretty face, a younger figure, and a graceful if less skilled aptitude in the making of omelettes in public.

The hour of the coming in of the coaches, was, therefore, a tragic hour.

On the arrival of the coaches Madame was at her post long before the pilgrims came up to her door. Being entirely without personal vanity— since she felt her beauty, her cleverness, her grace, and her charm to be only a part of the capital of the inn trade—a higher order of the stock in trade, as it were—she made it a point to look handsomer on the arrival of coaches than at any other time. Her cheeks were certain to be rosier; her bird's head was always carried a trifle more takingly, perched coquettishly sideways, that the caressing smile of welcome might be the more personal; and as the woman of business, lining the saint, so to speak, was also present, into the deep pockets of the blue-checked apron, the calculating fingers were thrust, that the quick counting of the incoming guests might not be made too obvious an action. After such a pose, to see a pilgrim escape! To see him pass by, unmoved by that smile, turning his feelingless back on the true shrine! It was enough to melt the stoutest heart. Madame's welcome of the captured, after such an affront, was set in the minor key; and her smile was the smile of a suffering angel.

"Cours, mon enfant, run, see if he descends or if he pushes on; tell him I am Madame Poulard!" This, a low command murmured between a hundred orders, still in the minor key, would be purred to Clementine, a peasant in a cap, exceeding fleet of foot, and skilled in the capture of wandering sheep.

And Clementine would follow that stray pilgrim: she would attack him in the open street; would even climb after him, if need be, up the steep rock steps, till, proved to be following strange gods, he would be brought triumphantly back to the kitchen-shrine, by Clementine, puffing, but exultant.

"Ah, monsieur, how could you pass us by?" madame's soft voice would murmur reproachfully in the pilgrim's ear. And the pilgrim, abashed, ashamed, would quickly make answer, if he were born of the right parents: "Chere madame, how was I to believe my eyes? It is ten years since I was here, and you are younger, more beautiful than ever! I was going in search of your mother!" at which needless truism all the kitchen would laugh. Madame Poulard herself would find time for one of her choicest smiles, although this was the great moment of the working of the miracle. She was beginning to cook the omelette.

The head-cook was beating the eggs in a great yellow bowl. Madame had already taken her stand at the yawning Louis XV. fireplace; she was beginning gently to balance the huge casserole over the glowing logs. And all the pilgrims were standing about, watching the process. Now, the group circling about the great fireplace was scarcely ever the same; the pilgrims presented a different face and garb day after day—but in point of hunger they were as one man; they were each and all as unvaryingly hungry as only tourists could be, who, clamoring for food, have the smell of it in their nostrils, with the added ache of emptiness gnawing within. But besides hunger, each one of the pilgrims had brought with him a pair of eyes; and what eyes of man can be pure savage before the spectacle of a pretty woman cooking, for him, before an open fire? Therefore it was that still another miracle was wrought, that of turning a famished mob into a buzzing swarm of admirers.

"Mais si, monsieur, in this pan I can cook an omelette large enough for you all; you will see. Ah, madame, you are off already? Celestine! Madame's bill, in the desk yonder. And you, monsieur, you too leave us? Deux cognacs? Victor—deux cognacs et une demi-tasse pour monsieur!"

These and a hundred other answers and questions and orders, were uttered in a fluted voice or in a tone of sharp command, by the miracle-worker, as the pan was kept gently turning, and the eggs were poured in at just the right moment—not one of the pretty poses of head and wrist being forgotten. Madame Poulard, like all clever women who are also pretty, had two voices: one was dedicated solely to the working of her charms; this one was soft, melodious, caressing, the voice of dove when cooing; the other, used for strictly business purposes, was set in the quick, metallic staccato tones proper for such occasions.

The dove's voice was trolling its sweetness, as she went on—

"Eggs, monsieur? How many I use? Ah, it is in the season that counting the dozens becomes difficult—seventy dozen I used one day last year!"

"Seventy dozen!" the pilgrim-chorus ejaculated, their eyes growing the wider as their lips moistened. For behold, the eggs were now cooked to a turn; the long-handled pan was being lifted with the effortless skill of long practice, the omelette was rolled out at just the right instant of consistency, and was being as quickly turned into its great flat dish.

There was a scurrying and scampering up the wide steps to the dining room, and a hasty settling into the long rows of chairs. Presently madame herself would appear, bearing the huge dish. And the omelette—the omelette, unlike the pilgrims, would be found to be always the same—melting, juicy, golden, luscious, and above all hot!

The noon-day table d'hote was always a sight to see. Many of the pilgrim-tourists came up to the Mont merely to pass the day, or to stop the night; the midday meal was therefore certain to be the liveliest of all the repasts.

The cloth was spread in a high, white, sunlit room. It was a trifle bare, this room, in spite of the walls being covered with pictures, the windows with pretty draperies, and the spotless linen that covered the long table. But all temples, however richly adorned, have a more or less unfurnished aspect; and this room served not only as the dining-table, but also as a foreshadowing of the apotheosis of Madame Poulard. Here were grouped together all the trophies and tributes of a grateful world; there were portraits of her charming brunette face signed by famous admirers; there were sonnets to her culinary skill and her charms as hostess, framed; these alternated with gifts of horned beasts that had been slain in her honor, and of stuffed birds who, in life, had beguiled the long winters for her with their songs. About the wide table, the snow of the linen reflected always the same picture; there were rows of little palms in flower-pots, interspersed with fruit dishes, with the butter pats, the almonds, and raisins, in their flat plates.

The rows of faces above the cloth were more varied. The four corners of the earth were sometimes to be seen gathered together about the breakfast-table. Frenchmen of the Midi, with the skin of Spaniards and the buzz of Tartarin's ze ze in their speech; priests, lean and fat; Germans who came to see a French stronghold as defenceless as a woman's palm; the Italian, a rarer type, whose shoes, sufficiently pointed to prick, and whose choice for decollete collars betrayed his nationality before his lisping French accent could place him indisputably beyond the Alps; herds of English—of all types—from the aristocrat, whose open-air life had colored his face with the hues of a butcher, to the pale, ascetic clerk, off on a two weeks' holiday, whose bending at his desk had given him the stoop of a scholar; with all these were mixed hordes of French provincials, chiefly of the bourgeois type, who singly, or in family parties, or in the nuptial train of sons or daughters, came up to the shrine of St. Michel.

To listen to the chatter of these tourists was to learn the last word of the world's news. As in the days before men spoke to each other across continents, and the medium of cold type had made the event of to-day the history of to-morrow, so these pilgrims talked through the one medium that alone can give a fact the real essence of freshness—the ever young, the perdurably charming human voice. It was as good as sitting out a play to watch the ever-recurring characteristics, which made certain national traits as marked as the noses on the faces of the tourists. The question, for example, on which side the Channel a pilgrim was born, was settled five seconds after he was seated at table. The way in which the butter was passed was one test; the manner of the eating of the famous omelette was another. If the tourist were a Frenchman, the neat glass butter-dish was turned into a visiting-card—a letter of introduction, a pontoon-bridge, in a word, hastily improvised to throw across the stream of conversation. "Madame" (this to the lady at the tourist's left), "me permet-elle de lui offrir le beurre?" Whereat madame bowed, smiled, accepted the golden balls as if it were a bouquet, returning the gift, a few seconds later, by the proffer of the gravy dish. Between the little ceremony of the two bows and the smiling mercis, a tentative outbreak of speech ensued, which at the end of a half-hour, had spread from bourgeois to countess, from cure to Parisian boulevardier, till the entire side of the table was in a buzz of talk. These genial people of a genial land finding themselves all in search of the same adventure, on top of a hill, away from the petty world of conventionality, remembered that speech was given to man to communicate with his fellows. And though neighbors for a brief hour, how charming such an hour can be made when into it are crowded the effervescence of personal experience, the witty exchange of comment and observation, and the agreeable conflict of thought and opinion!

On the opposite side of the table, what a contrast! There the English were seated. There was the silence of the grave. All the rigid figures sat as upright as posts. In front of these severe countenances, the butter-plates remained as fixtures; the passing of them to a neighbor would be a frightful breach of good form—besides being dangerous. Such practices, in public places, had been known to lead to things—to unspeakable things—to knowing the wrong people, to walks afterward with cads one couldn't shake off, even to marriages with the impossible! Therefore it was that the butter remained a fixture. Even between those who formed the same tourist-party, there was rarely such an act of self-forgetfulness committed as an indulgence in talk—in public. The eye is the only active organ the Englishman carries abroad with him; his talking is done by staring. What fierce scowls, what dark looks of disapproval, contempt, and dislike were levelled at the chattering Frenchmen opposite.



Across the table, the national hate perpetuated itself. It appears to be a test of patriotism, this hatred between Frenchmen and Englishmen. That strip of linen might easily have been the Channel itself; it could scarcely more effectually have separated the two nations. A whole comedy of bitterness, a drama of rivalry, and a five-act tragedy of scorn were daily played between the Briton who sat facing the south, and the Frenchman who faced north. Both, as they eyed their neighbor over the foam of their napkins, had the Island in their eye!—the Englishman to flaunt its might and glory in the teeth of the hated Gaul, and the Frenchman to return his contempt for a nation of moist barbarians.

Meanwhile, the omelette was going its rounds. It was being passed at that moment to Monsieur le Cure. He had been watching its progress with glistening eye and moistening lips. Madame Poulard, as she slipped the melting morsel beneath his elbow, had suddenly assumed the role of the penitent. Her tone was a reminder of the confessional, as of one who passed her masterpiece apologetically. She, forsooth, a sinner, to have the honor of ministering to the carnal needs of a son of the Church!

The son of the Church took two heaping spoonfuls. His eye gave her, with his smile, the benediction of his gratitude, even before he had tasted of the luscious compound.

"Ah, chere madame! il n'y a que vous—it is only you who can make the ideal omelette! I have tried, but Suzette has no art in her fingers; your receipt doesn't work away from the Mont!" And the good man sighed as he chuckled forth his praises.

He had come up to the hill in company with the two excellent ladies beside him, of his flock, to make a little visit to his brethren yonder, to the priests who were still here, wrecks of the once former flourishing monastery. He had come to see them, and also to gaze on La Merveille. It was a good five years since he had looked upon its dungeons and its lace-work. But after all, in his secret soul of souls, he had longed to eat of the omelette. Dieu! how often during those slow, quiet years in the little hamlet yonder on the plain, had its sweetness and lightness mocked his tongue with illusive tasting! Little wonder, therefore, that the good cure's praises were sweet in madame's ear, for they had the ring of truth—and of envy! And madame herself was only mortal, for what woman lives but feels herself uplifted by the sense of having found favor in the eyes of her priest?

The omelette next came to a halt between the two ladies of the cure's flock. These were two bourgeoises with the deprecating, mistrustful air peculiar to commonplace the world over. The walk up the steep stairs was still quickening their breath their compressed bosoms were straining the hooks of their holiday woollen bodices—cut when they were of slenderer build. Their bonnets proclaimed the antique fashions of a past decade; but the edge of their tongues had the keenness that comes with daily practice—than which none has been found surer than adoration of one's pastor, and the invigorating gossip of small towns.

These ladies eyed the omelette with a chilled glance. Naturally, they could not see as much to admire in Madame Poulard or in her dish as did their cure. There was nothing so wonderful after all in the turning of eggs over a hot fire. The omelette!—after all, an omelette is an omelette! Some are better—some are worse; one has one's luck in cooking as in anything else. They had come up to the Mont with their good cure to see its wonders and for a day's outing; admiration of other women had not been anticipated as a part of the programme. Tiens—who was he talking to now? To that tall blonde—a foreigner, a young girl—tiens—who knows?—possibly an American—those Americans are terrible, they say—bold, immodest, irreverent. And the two ladies' necks were screwed about their over-tight collars, to give Charm the verdict of their disapproval.

"Monsieur le Cure, they are passing you the fish!" cried the stouter, more aggressive parishioner, who boasted a truculent mustache.

"Monsieur le Cure, the roast is at your elbow!" interpolated the second, with the more timid voice of a second in action; this protector of the good cure had no mustache, but her face was mercifully protected by nature from a too-disturbing combination of attractions, by being plentifully punctuated with moles from which sprouted little tufts of hair. The rain of these ladies' interruption was incessant; but the cure was a man of firm mind; their efforts to recapture his attention were futile. For the music of Charm's foreign voice was in his ear. Worship of the cloth is not a national, it is a more or less universal cult, I take it. It is in the blood of certain women. Opposite the two fussy, jealous bourgeoises, were others as importunate and aggressive. They were of fair, lean, lank English build, with the shifting eyes and the persistent courage which come to certain maidens in whose lives there is but one fixed and certain fact—that of having missed the matrimonial market. The shrine of their devotions, and the present citadel of their attack, was seated between them—he also being lean, pale, high-arched of brow, high anglican by choice, and noticeably weak of chin, in whose sable garments there was framed the classical clerical tie.

To this curate Madame was now passing her dish. She still wore her fine sweet smile, but there was always a discriminating reserve in its edge when she touched the English elbow. The curate took his spoonful with the indifference of a man who had never known the religion of good eating. He put up his one eye-glass; it swept Madame's bending face, its smile, and the yellow glory floating beneath both. "Ah-h—ya-as— an omelette!" The glass was dropped; he took a meagre spoonful which he cut, presently, with his knife. He turned then to his neighbors—to both his neighbors! They had been talking of the parish church on the hill.

"Ah-h-h, ya-as—lovely porch—isn't it?"

"Oh, lovely—lovely!" chorussed the two maidens, with assenting fervor. "Were you there this morning?" and they lifted eyes swimming with the rapture of their admiration.

"Ya-as."

"Only fancy—our missing you! We were both there!"

"Dear me! Really, were you?"

"Could you go this afternoon? I do want so to hear your criticism of my drawing—I'm working on the arch now."

"So sorry—can't—possibly. I promised what's his name to go over to Tombelaine, don't you know!"

"Oh-h! We do so want to go to Tombelaine!"

"Ah-h—do you, really? One ought to start a little before the tide drops—they tell me!" and the clerical eye, through its correctly adjusted glass, looked into those four pleading eyes with no hint of softening. The dish that was the masterpiece of the house, meanwhile, had been despatched as if it were so much leather.

The omelette fared no better with the brides, as a rule, than with the English curates. Such a variety of brides as came 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 the 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.

Some of the peasant weddings were noisy, boisterous performances; but how gay were the brides, and how bloated with joy the hardy, knotty-handied grooms! These peasant wedding guests all bore a striking family likeness; they might easily all have been brothers and sisters, whether they had come from the fields near Pontorson, or Cancale, or Dol, or St. Malo. The older the women, the prettier and the more gossamer were the caps; but the younger maidens were always delightful to look upon, such was the ripe vigor of their frames, and the liquid softness of eyes that, like animals, were used to wide sunlit fields and to great skies full of light. The bride, in her brand-new stuff gown, with a bonnet that recalled the bridal wreath only just laid aside, was also certain to be of a general universal type with the broad hips, wide waist, muscular limbs, and the melting sweetness of lips and eyes that only abundant health and a rich animalism of nature bring to maidenhood.

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 modelled face. Then all would take their seats noisily at table. It was Madame Poulard who then would 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. "Tiens, ce n'est pas gai, la noce! I must learn the reason!" Madame would then flutter over the bridal breakfasters as a delicate plumaged bird hovers over a mass of stuff out of which it hopes to make a respectable meal. She presently would return to murmur in a whisper, "it is a mariage de raison. They, the bride and groom, love elsewhere, but they are marrying to make a good partnership; they are both hair-dressers at Caen. They have bought a new and fine shop with their earnings." Or it would be, "Look, madame, at that jolie personne; see how sad she looks. She is in love with her cousin who sits opposite, but the groom is the old one. He has a large farm and a hundred cows." To look on such a trio would only be to make the acquaintance anew of Sidonie and Risler and of Froment Jeune. Such brides always had the wandering gaze of those in search of fresh horizons, or of those looking already for the chance of escape. For such "unhappies," ces malheureuses, Madame's manner had an added softness and tenderness; she passed the frosted bridal cake as if it were a propitiatory offering to the God of Hymen. However melancholy the bride, the cake and Madame's caressing smiles wrought ever the same spell; for an instant, at least, the newly-made wife was in love with matrimony and with the cake, accepting the latter with the pleased surprise of one who realizes that, at least, on one's wedding day, one is a person of importance; that even so far as Mont St. Michel the news of their marriage had turned the ovens into a baking of wedding-cakes. This was destined to be the first among the deceptions that greeted such brides; for there were hundreds of such cakes, alas! kept constantly on hand. They were the same—a glory of sugar-mouldings and devices covering a mountain of richness—that were sent up yearly at Christmas time to certain mansard studios in the Latin quarter, where the artist recipients, like the brides, eat of the cake as did Adam when partaking of the apple, believing all the woman told them!

There were other visitors who came up to the Mont, not as welcome as were these tourist parties.

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-a-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.

At the entrance gate a tremendous hubbub and noise announced the arrival of the pilgrimage. Wagons, carts, horses, and peasants were crowded together as only such a throng is mixed in pilgrimages, wars, and fairs. Women were taking down hoods, unharnessing the horses, fitting slats into outsides of wagons, rolling up blankets, unpacking from the char-a-bancs cooking utensils, children, grain-bags, long columns of bread, and hard-boiled eggs. For the women, darting hither and thither in their blue petticoats, their pink and red kerchiefs, and the stiff white Norman caps, were doing all the work. The men appeared to be decorative adjuncts, plying the Norman's gift of tongue across wagon-wheels and over the back of their vigorous wives and daughters. For them the battle of the day was over; the hour of relaxation had come. The bargains they had made along the route were now to be rehearsed, seasoned with a joke.

"Allons, toi, on ne fait pas de la monnaie blanche comme ca!"

"Je t'ai offert huit sous, tu sais, lapin!"

"Farceur, va-t'en—"

"Come, are you never going to have done fooling?" cried a tan-colored, wide-hipped peasant to her husband, who was lounging against the wagon pole, sporting a sprig of gentian pinned to his blouse. He was fat and handsome; and his eye proclaimed, as he was making it do heavy work at long range at a cluster of girls descending from an antique gig, that the knowledge of the same was known unto him.

"That's right, growl ahead, thou, tes beaux jours sont passes, but for me l'amour, l'amour—que c'est gai, que c'est frais!" he half sung, half shouted.

The moving mass of color, the Breton caps, and the Norman faces, the gold crosses that fell from dented bead necklaces, the worn hooped earrings, the clean bodices and home-spun skirts, streamed out past our windows as we looked down upon them. How pretty were some of the faces, of the younger women particularly! and with what gay spirits they were beginning their day! It had begun the night before, almost; many of the carts had been driven in from the forests beyond Avranches; some of the Brittany groups had started the day before. But what can quench the fountain of French vivacity? To see one's world, surely, there is nothing in that to tire one; it only excites and exhilarates; and so a fair or market day, and above all a pilgrimage, are better than balls, since they come more regularly; they are the peasant's opera, his Piccadilly and Broadway, club, drawing-room, Exchange, and parade, all in one.

A half-hour after a landing of the pilgrims at the outer gates of the fortifications, the hill was swarming with them. The single street of the town was choked with the black gowns and the cobalt-blue blouses. Before these latter took a turn at their devotions they did homage to Bacchus. Crowds of peasants were to be seen seated about the long, narrow inn-tables, lifting huge pewter tankards to bristling beards. Some of these taverns were the same that had fed and sheltered bands of pilgrims that are now mere handfuls of dust in country churchyards. Those sixteenth century pilgrims, how many of them, had found this same arched doorway of La Licorne as cool as the shade of great trees after the long hot climb up to the hill! What a pleasant face has the timbered facade of the Tete d'Or, and the Mouton Blanc, been to the weary-limbed: and how sweet to the dead lips has been the first taste of the acid cider!

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 of 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 bit 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. There were a dozen such altars and groups scattered over the perpendicular slant of the hill. The singing of the choir-boys, rising like skylark notes into the clear space of heaven, would be floating from one rocky-nested chapel, while below, in the one beneath which we, for a moment, were resting, there would be the groaning murmur of the peasant groups in prayer.

All day little processions were going up and down the steep stone steps that lead from fortified rock to parish church, and from the town to the abbatial gateway. The banners and the choir-boys, the priests in their embroideries and lace, the peasants in cap and blouse, were incessantly mounting and descending, standing on rock edges, caught for an instant between a medley of perpendicular roofs, of giant gateways, and a long perspective of fortified walls, only to be lost in the curve of a bastion, or a flying buttress, that, in their turn, would be found melting into a distant sea-view.

All the hours of a pilgrimage, we discovered, were not given to prayer; nor yet is an incessant bowing at the shrine of St. Michel the sole other diversion in a true pilgrim's round of pious devotions. Later on in this eventful day, we stumbled on a somewhat startling variation to the penitential order of the performances. In a side alley, beneath a friendly overhanging rock and two protecting roof-eaves, an acrobat was making her professional toilet. When she emerged to lay a worn strip of carpet on the rough cobbles of the street, she presented a pathetic figure in the gold of the afternoon sun. She was old and wrinkled; the rouge would no longer stick to the sunken cheeks; the wrinkles were become clefts; the shrunken but still muscular legs were clad in a pair of tights, a very caricature of the silken webs that must once have encased the poor old creature's limbs, for these were knitted of the coarse thread the commonest peasant uses for the rough field stocking. Over these obviously home-made coverings was a single skirt of azure tarlatan, plentifully besprinkled with golden stars. The gossamer skirt and its spangles turned, for their debut, a somersault in the air, and the knitted tights took strange leaps from the bars of a rude trapeze. The groups of peasants were soon thicker about this spectacle than they had gathered about the improvised altars. All the men who had passed the day in the taverns came out at the sound of the hoarse cracked voice of the aged acrobat. As she hurled her poor old twisted shape from swinging bar to pole, she cried aloud, "Ah, messieurs, essayez ca seulement!" The men's hands, when she had landed on her feet after an uncommonly venturous whirl of the blue skirts in mid-air, came out of their deep pockets; but they seasoned their applause with coarse jokes which they flung, with a cruel relish, into the pitifully-aged face. A cracked accordion and a jingling tambourine were played by two hardened-looking ruffians, seated on their heels beneath a window—a discordant music that could not drown the noise of the peasants' derisive laughter. But the latter's pennies rattled a louder jingle into the ancient acrobat's tin cup than it had into the priest's green netted contribution box.

"No, madame, as for us, we do not care for pilgrimages," was Madame Poulard's verdict on such survivals of past religious enthusiasms. And she seasoned her comments with an enlightening shrug. "We see too well how they end. The men go home dead drunk, the women are dropping with fatigue, et les enfants meme se grisent de cidre! No; pilgrimages are bad for everyone. The priests should not allow them."

This was at the end of the day, after the black and blue swarm had passed, a weary, uncertain-footed throng, down the long street, to take its departure along the dike. At the very end of the straggling procession came the three acrobats; they had begged, or bought, a drive across the dike from some of the pilgrims. The lady of the knitted tights, in her conventional skirts and womanly fichu, was scarcely distinguishable from the peasant women who eyed her askance; though decently garbed now, they looked at her as if she were some plague or vice walking in their midst.

The verdict of Madame Poulard seemed to be the verdict of all Mont St. Michel. The whole town was abroad that evening, on its doorsteps and in its garden beds, repairing the ravages committed by the band of the pilgrims. Never had the town, as a town, been so dirty; never had the street presented so shocking a collection of abominations; never had flowers and shrubs been so mercilessly robbed and plundered—these were the comments that flowed as freely as the water that was rained over the dusty cobbles, thick with refuse of luncheon and the shreds of torn skirts and of children's socks.

At any hour of the day, of even an ordinary, uneventful day, to take a walk in the town is to encounter a surprise at every turning. Would you call it a town—this one straggling street that begins in a King's gateway and ends—ah, that is the point, just where does it end? I, for one, was never once quite certain at just what precise point this one single Mont St. Michel street stopped—lost itself, in a word, and became something else. That was also true of so many other things on the hill; all objects had such an astonishing way of suddenly becoming something else. A house, for example, that you had passed on your upward walk, had a beguiling air of sincerity. It had its cellar beneath the street front like any other properly built house; it continued its growth upward, showing the commonplace features of a door, of so many windows—queerly spaced, and of an amazing variety of shapes, but still unmistakably windows. Then, assured of so much integrity of character, you looked to see the roof covering the house, and instead-like the eggs in a Chinese juggler's fingers, that are turned in a jiffy into a growing plant—behold the roof miraculously transformed into a garden, or lost in a rampart, or, with quite shameless effrontery, playing deserter, and serving as the basement of another and still fairer dwelling. That was a sample of the way all things played you the trick of surprise on this hill. Stairways began on the cobbles of the streets, only to lose themselves in a side wall; a turn on the ramparts would land you straight into the privacy of a St. Michelese interior, with an entire household, perchance, at the mercy of your eye, taken at the mean disadvantage of morning dishabille. As for doors that flew open where you looked to find a bastion; or a school—house that flung all the Michelese voyous over the tops of the ramparts at play-time; or of fishwives that sprung, as full-armed in their kit as Minerva from her sire's brows, from the very forehead of fortified places; or of beds and settees and wardrobes (surely no Michelese has ever been able, successfully, to maintain in secret the ghost of a family skeleton!) into which you were innocently precipitated on your way to discover the minutest of all cemeteries—these were all commonplace occurrences once your foot was set on this Hill of Surprises.

There are two roads that lead one to the noble mass of buildings crowning the hill. One may choose the narrow street with its moss-grown steps, its curves, and turns; or one may have the broader path along the ramparts, with its glorious outlook over land and sea. Whichever approach one chooses, one passes at last beneath the great doors of the Barbican.

Three times did the vision of St. Michel appear to Saint Aubert, in his dream, commanding the latter to erect a church on the heights of Mont St. Michel to his honor. How many a time must the modern pilgrim traverse the stupendous mass that has grown out of that command before he is quite certain that the splendor of Mont St. Michel is real, and not a part of a dream! Whether one enters through the dark magnificence of the great portals of the Chatelet; whether one mounts the fortified stairway, passing into the Salle des Gardes, passing onward from dungeon to fortified bridge, to gain the abbatial residence; whether one leaves the vaulted splendor of oratories for aerial passage-ways, only to emerge beneath the majestic roof of the Cathedral—that marvel of the early Norman, ending in the Gothic choir of the fifteenth century; or, as one penetrates into the gloom of the mighty dungeons where heroes and the brothers of kings, and saints and scientists have died their long death—as one gropes through the black night of the Crypt, where a faint, mysterious glint of light falls aslant the mystical face of the Black Virgin; as one climbs to the light beneath the ogive arches of the Aumonerie, through the wide-lit aisles of the Salle des Chevaliers, past the slender Gothic columns of the Refectory, up at last to the crowning glory of all the glories of La Merveille, to the exquisitely beautiful colonnades of the open Cloister the impressions and emotions excited by these ecclesiastical and military masterpieces are ever the same, however many times one may pass them in review. A charm, indefinable, but replete with subtle attractions, lurks in every one of these dungeons. The great halls have a power to make one retraverse their space, I have yet to find under other vaulted chambers. The grass that is set, like a green jewel, in the arabesques of the Cloister, is a bit of greensward the feet press with a different tread to that which skips lightly over other strips of turf. And the world, that one looks out upon through prison bars, that is so gloriously arched in the arm of a flying buttress, or that lies prone at your feet from the dizzy heights of the rock clefts, is not the world in which you, daily, do your petty stretch of toil, in which you laugh and ache, sorrow, sigh, and go down to your grave in. The secret of this deep attraction may lie in the fact of one's being in a world that is built on a height. Much, doubtless, of the charm lies, also, in the reminders of all the human life that, since the early dawn of history, has peopled this hill. One has the sense of living at tremendously high mental pressure; of impressions, emotions, sensations crowding upon the mind; of one's whole meagre outfit of memory, of poetic equipment, and of imaginative furnishing, being unequal to the demand made by even the most hurried tour of the great buildings, or the most flitting review of the noble massing of the clouds and the hilly seas.

The very emptiness and desolation of all the buildings on the hill help to accentuate their splendor. The stage is magnificently set; the curtain, even, is lifted. One waits for the coming on of kingly shapes, for the pomp of trumpets, for the pattering of a mighty host. But, behold, all is still. And one sits and sees only a shadowy company pass and repass across that glorious mise-en-scene. For, in a certain sense, I know no other mediaeval mass of buildings as peopled as are these. The dead shapes seem to fill the vast halls. The Salle des Chevaliers is crowded, daily, with a brilliant gathering of knights, who sweep the trains of their white damask mantles, edged with ermine, over the dulled marble of the floor; two by two they enter the hall; the golden shells on their mantles make the eyes blink, as the groups gather about the great chimneys, or wander through the column-broken space. Behind this dazzling cortege, up the steep steps of the narrow street, swarm other groups—the mediaeval pilgrim host that rushes into the cathedral aisles, and that climbs the ramparts to watch the stately procession as it makes its way toward the church portals. There are still other figures that fill every empty niche and deserted watch-tower. Through the lancet windows of the abbatial gateways the yeomanry of the vassal villages are peering; it is the weary time of the Hundred Years' War, and all France is watching, through sentry windows, for the approach of her dread enemy. On the shifting sands below, as on brass, how indelibly fixed are the names of the hundred and twenty-nine knights whose courage drove, step by step, over that treacherous surface, the English invaders back to their island strongholds. Will you have a less stormy and belligerent company to people the hill? In the quieter days of the fourteenth century, on any bright afternoon, you could have sat beside some friendly artist-monk, and watched him color and embellish those wondrous missals that made the manuscripts of the Brothers famous throughout France. Earlier yet, in those naive centuries, Robert de Torigny, that "bouche des Papes," would doubtless have discoursed to you on any subject dear to this "counsellor of kings"—on books, or architecture, or the science of fortifications, or on the theology of Lanfranc; from the helmeted locks of Rollon to the veiled tresses of the lovely Tiphaine Raguenel, Duguesclin's wife; from the ghastly rat-eaten body of the Dutch journalist, who offended that tyrant King, Louis XIV., to the Revolutionary heroes, as pitilessly doomed to an odious death under the gentle Louis Philippe—there is no shape or figure in French history which cannot be summoned at will to refill either a dungeon or a palace chamber at Mont St. Michel.

Even in these, our modern days, one finds strange relics of past fashions in thought and opinion. The various political, religious, and ethical forms of belief to be met with in a fortnight's sojourn on the hill, give one a sense of having passed in review a very complete gallery of ancient and modern portraits of men's minds. In time one learns to traverse even a dozen or more centuries with ease. To be in the dawn of the eleventh century in the morning; at high noon to be in the flood-tide of the fifteenth; and, as the sun dipped, to hear the last word of our own dying century—such were the flights across the abysmal depths of time Charm and I took again and again.

One of our chosen haunts was in a certain watch-tower. From its top wall, the loveliest prospect of Mont St. Michel was to be enjoyed. Day after day and sunset after sunset, we sat out the hours there. Again and again the world, as it passed, came and took its seat beside us. Pilgrims of the devout and ardent type would stop, perchance, would proffer a preliminary greeting, would next take their seat along the parapet, and, quite unconsciously, would end by sitting for their portrait. One such sitter, I remember, was clad in carmine crepe shawl; she was bonneted in the shape of a long-ago decade. She had climbed the hill in the morning before dawn, she said; she had knelt in prayer as the sun rose. For hers was a pilgrimage made in fulfilment of a vow. St. Michel had granted her wish, and she in return had brought her prayers to his shrine.

"Ah, mesdames! how good is God! How greatly He rewards a little self- sacrifice. Figure to yourselves the Mont in the early mists, with the sun rising out of the sea and the hills. I was on my knees, up there. I had eaten nothing since yesterday at noon. I was full of the Holy Ghost. When the sun broke at last, it was God Himself in all His glory come down to earth! The whole earth seemed to be listening—pretait l'oreille—and with the great stillness, and the sea, and the light breaking everywhere, it was as if I were being taken straight up into Paradise. Saint Michel himself must have been supporting me."

The carmine crepe shawl covered a poet, you see, as well as a devotee.

Up yonder, in the little shops and stalls tucked away within the walls of the Barbican, a lively traffic, for many a century now, has been going on in relics and plombs de pelerinage. Some of these mediaeval impressions have been unearthed in strange localities, in the bed of the Seine, as far away as Paris. Rude and archaic are many of these early essays in the sculptor's art. But they preserve for us, in quaint intensity, the fervor of adoration which possessed that earlier, more devout time and period. On the mind of this nineteenth century pilgrim, the same lovely old forms of belief and superstition were imprinted as are still to be seen in some of those winged figures of St. Michel, with feet securely set on the back of the terrible dragon, staring, with triumphant gaze, through stony or leaden eyes.

On the evening of the pilgrimage our friend, the Parisian, joined us on our high perch. The Mont seemed strangely quiet after the noise and confusion the peasants had brought in their train. The Parisian, like ourselves, had been glad to escape into the upper heights of the wide air, after the bustle and hurry of the day at our inn.

"You permit me, mesdames?" He had lighted his after-dinner cigar; he went on puffing, having gained our consent. He curled a leg comfortably about the railings of a low bridge connecting a house that sprang out of a rock, with the rampart. Below, there was a clean drop of a few hundred feet, more or less. In spite of the glories of a spectacular sunset, yielding ceaseless changes and transformations of cloud and sea tones, the words of Madame Poulard alone had power to possess our companion. She had uttered her protest against the pilgrimage, as she had swept the Parisian's pousse-cafe from his elbow. He took up the conversation where it had been dropped.

"It is amusing to hear Madame Poulard talk of the priests stopping the pilgrimages! The priests? Why, that's all they have left them to live upon now. These peasants' are the only pockets in which they can fumble nowadays."

"All the same, one can't help being grateful to those peasants," retorted Charm. "They are the only creatures who have made these things seem to have any meaning. How dead it all seems! The abbey, the cloisters, the old prisons, the fortifications, it is like wandering through a splendid tomb!

"Yes, as the cure said yesterday, 'l'ame n'y est plus,'—since the priests have been dislodged, it is the house of the dead."

"The priests"—the Parisian snorted at the very sound of the word—"they have only themselves to blame. They would have been here still, if they had not so abused their power."

"How did they abuse it?" Charm asked.

"In every possible way. I am, myself, not of the country. But my brother was stationed here for some years, when the Mont was garrisoned. The priests were in full possession then, and they conducted a lively commerce, mademoiselle. The Mont was turned into a show—to see it or any part of it, everyone had to pay toll. On the great fete-days, when St. Michel wore his crown, the gold ran like water into the monks' treasury. It was still then a fashionable religious fad to have a mass said for one's dead, out here among the clouds and the sea. Well, try to imagine fifty masses all dumped on the altar together; that is, one mass would be scrambled through, no names would be mentioned, no one save le bon Dieu himself knew for whom it was being said; but fifty or more believed they had bought it, since they had paid for it. And the priests laughed in their sleeves, and then sat down, comfortably, to count the gold. Ah, mesdames, those were, literally, the golden days of the priesthood! What with the pilgrimages, and the sale of relics, and les benefices—together with the charges for seeing the wonders of the Mont—what a trade they did! It is only the Jews, who, in their turn, now own us, up in Paris, who can equal the priests as commercial geniuses!" And our pessimistic Parisian, during the next half-hour, gave us a prophetic picture of the approaching ruin of France, brought about by the genius for plunder and organization that is given to the sons of Moses.

Following the Parisian, a figure, bent and twisted, opened a door in a side-wall, and took his seat beside us. One became used, in time, to these sudden appearances; to vanish down a chimney, or to emerge from the womb of a rock, or to come up from the bowels of what earth there was to be found—all such exits and entrances became as commonplace as all the other extraordinary phases of one's life on the hill. This particular shape had emerged from a hut, carved, literally, out of the side of the rock; but, for a hut, it was amazingly snug—as we could see for ourselves; for the venerable shape hospitably opened the low wooden door, that we might see how much of a home could be made out of the side of a rock. Only, when one had been used to a guard-room, and to great and little dungeons, and to a rattling of keys along dark corridors, a hut, and the blaze of the noon sun, were trying things to endure, as the shape, with a shrug, gave us to understand.

"You see, mesdames, I was jailor here, years ago, when all La Merveille was a prison. Ah! those were great days for the Mont! There were soldiers and officers who came up to look at the soldiers, and the soldiers—it was their business to look after the prisoners. The Emperor himself came here once—I saw him. What a sight!—Dieu! all the monks and priests and nuns, and the archbishop himself were out. What banners and crosses and flags! The cannon was like a great thunder—and the greve was red with soldiers. Ah, those were days! Dieu—why couldn't the republic have continued those glories—ces gloires? Aujourd'hui nous ne sommes que des morts—instead of prisoners to handle—to watch and work, like so many good machines there is only the dike yonder to keep in repair! What changes—mon Dieu! what changes!" And the shape wrung his hands. It was, in truth, a touching spectacle of grief for a good old past.

An old priest, with equally saddened vision, once came to take his seat, quite easily and naturally, beside us, on our favorite perch. He was one of the little band of priests who had remained faithful to the Mont after the government had dispersed his brothers—after the monastery had been broken up. He and his four or five companions had taken refuge in a small house, close by the cemetery; it was they who conducted the services in the little parish church; who had gathered the treasures still grouped together in that little interior—the throne of St. Michel, with its blue draperies and the golden fleur-de-lis, the floating banners and the shields of the Knights of St. Michel, the relics, and wondrous bits of carving rescued from the splendors of the cathedral.

"Ah, mesdames—que voulez-vous?" was the old priest's broken chant; he was bewailing the woes that had come to his order, to religion, to France. "What will you have? The history of nations repeats itself, as we all know. We, of our day, are fallen on evil times; it is the reign of image-breakers—nothing is sacred, except money."

"France has worn herself out. She is like an old man, the hero of many battles, who cares only for his easy chair and his slippers. She does not care about the children who are throwing stones at the windows. She likes to snooze, in the sun, and count her money-bags. France is too old to care about religion, or the future—she is thinking how best to be comfortable—here in this world, when she has rheumatism and a cramp in the stomach!" And the old priest wrapped his own soutane about his lean knees, suiting his gesture to his inward convictions.

Was the priest's summary the last word of truth about modern France? On the sands that lay below at our feet, we read a different answer.

The skies were still brilliantly lighted. The actual twilight had not come yet, with its long, deep glow, a passion of color that had a longer life up here on the heights than when seen from a lower level. This twilight hour was always a prolonged moment of transfiguration for the Mont.

The very last evening of our stay, we chose this as the loveliest light in which to see the last of the hill. On that evening, I remember, the reds and saffrons in the sky were of an astonishing richness. The sea wall, the bastions, the faces of the great rocks, the yellow broom that sprang from the clefts therein, were dyed as in a carmine bath. In that mighty glow of color, all things took on something of their old, their stupendous splendor. The giant walls were paved with brightness. The town, climbing the hill, assumed the proportions of a mighty citadel; the forest tree-tops were prismatic, emerald balls flung beneath the illumined Merveille; and the Cathedral was set in a daffodil frame; its aerial escalier de dentelle, like Jacob's ladder, led one easily heavenward. The circling birds, in the lace-work of the spiral finials, sang their night songs, as the glow in the sky changed, softened, deepened.

This was the world that was in the west.

Toward the east, on the flat surface of the sands, this world cast a strange and wondrous shadow. Jagged rocks, a pyramidal city, a Gothic cathedral in mid-air—behold the rugged outlines of Mont St. Michel carving their giant features on the shifting, sensitive surface of the mirroring sands.

In the little pools and the trickling rivers, the fishermen—from this height, Liliputians grappling with Liliputian meshes—were setting their nets for the night. Across the river-beds, peasant women and fishwives, with bared legs and baskets clasped to their bending backs, appeared and disappeared—shapes that emerged into the light only to vanish into the gulf of the night.

In was in these pictures that we read our answer.

Like Mont St. Michel, so has France carried into the heights of history her glory and her power. On every century, she, like this world in miniature, has also cast her shadow, dwarfing some, illuminating others. And, as on those distant sands the toiling shapes of the fishermen are to be seen, early and late, in summer and winter, so can France point to her people, whose industry and amazing talent for toil have made her, and maintain her, great.

Some of these things we have learned, since, in Normandy Inns, we have sat at meat with her peasants, and have grown to be friends with her fishwives.

THE END