In and out of Three Normandy Inns Part 31

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 s.h.i.+elds 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 pa.s.sion 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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, a.s.sumed the proportions of a mighty citadel; the forest tree-tops were prismatic, emerald b.a.l.l.s 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 s.h.i.+fting, 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.