Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume IV Part 4

What a fresh sensation, this of standing-on a terrace in mid-air and looking down on the sea and across to the level sh.o.r.es. The rose vines--we found them sweet--"Ah"--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 special need of madame's being in haste ...

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 mold--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. Michael, that it carries so much of man's handiwork up into the blue fields of the air; this achievement alone would mark it as unique among hills.

It appears as if for once man and nature had agreed to work in concert to produce a masterpiece in stone. The hill and the architectural beauties it carries aloft, are like a taunt flung out to sea and to the upper heights of air; for centuries they appear to have been crying aloud, "See what we can do, against your tempests and your futile tides--when we try" ... Rustic France along this coast still makes pilgrimages to the shrine of the Archangel St. Michael. No marriage is rightly arranged which does not include a wedding-journey across the "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 a plague of locusts let loose upon the defenseless hill!

It was impossible, after sojourning a certain time upon the hill, not to concede that there were two equally strong centers of attraction that drew the world hitherward. One remained, indeed, gravely suspended between the doubt and the fear, as to which of these potential units had the greater pull, in point of actual attraction.

The impartial historian, given to a just weighing of evidence, would have been startled to find how invariably the scales tipped; how lightly an historical Mont, born of a miracle, crowned by the n.o.blest buildings, a pious Mecca for saints and kings innumerable, shot up like feathers in lightness when overweighted by the modern realities of a perfectly appointed inn, the cooking and eating of an omelet of omelets, and the all-conquering charms of Madame Poulard.

The fog of doubt thickened as, day after day, the same scenes were enacted; when one beheld all sorts of conditions of men similarly affected; when, again and again, the potentiality in the human magnet was proved true. Doubt turned to conviction, at the last, that the holy shrine of St. Michael had, in truth, been violated; that the Mont had been desecrated; that the latter exists now solely as a setting for a pearl of an inn; and that within the shrine--it is Madame Poulard herself who fills the niche!...

Such a variety of brides as come up to the Mont! You could have your choice, at the midday meal, of almost any nationality, age, or color.

The attempt among these bridal couples to maintain the distant air of a finished indifference only made their secret the more open.

The British phlegm, on such a journey, did not always serve as a convenient mask; the flattering, timid glance, the ripple of tender whispers, and the furtive touching of fingers beneath the table, made even these English couples a part of the great human marrying family; their superiority to their fellows would return, doubtless, when the honey had dried out of their moon.

The best of our adventures into this tender country were with the French bridal tourists; they were certain to be delightfully human. As we had had occasion to remark before, they were off, like ourselves, on a little voyage of discovery; they had come to make acquaintance with the being to whom they were mated for life. Various degrees of progress could be read in the air and manner of the hearty young "bourgeoises" and their paler or even ruddier partners, as they crunched their bread or sipped their thin wine. Some had only entered as yet upon the path of inquiry; others had already pa.s.sed the mile-stone of criticism; and still others had left the earth and were floating in full azure of intoxication. Of the many wedding parties that sat down to breakfast, we soon made the commonplace discovery that the more plebeian the company, the more certain-orbed appeared to be the promise of happiness....

Madame Poulard's air with this, her world, was as full of tact as with the tourists. Many of the older women would give her the Norman kiss, solemnly, as if the salute were a part of the ceremony attendant on the eating of a wedding breakfast at Mont St. Michel. There would be a three times' clapping of the wrinkled or the ruddy peasant cheeks against the sides of Madame Poulard's daintier, more delicately modeled face. Then all would take their seats noisily at the table. It was Madame Poulard who would then bring us news of the party. At the end of a fortnight Charm and I felt ourselves to be in possession of the hidden and secret reasons for all the marrying that had been done along the coast that year....

One morning, as we looked toward Pontorson, a small black cloud appeared to be advancing across the bay. The day was windy; the sky was crowded with huge white mountains--round, luminous clouds that moved in stately sweeps. And the sea was the color one loves to see in an earnest woman's eye, the dark blue sapphire that turns to blue-gray. This was a setting that made that particular cloud, making such slow progress across from the sh.o.r.e, all the more conspicuous.

Gradually, as the black ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, to take off their shoes and stockings and to tuck up their thick skirts. When they finally started they were like unto so many huge cheeses hoisted on stilts. The bare legs plunged boldly forward, keeping ahead of the slower-moving peasant lads; the girls' bravery served them till they reached the fringe of the incoming tide; not until their knees went under water did they forego their venture. A higher wave came in, deluging the ones farthest out; and then ensued a scampering toward the dike and a climbing up of the stone embankment.

The old route across the sands, that had been the only one known to kings and barons, was not good enough for a modern Norman peasant. The religion of personal comfort has spread even as far as the fields.

Other aspects of the hill, on this day of the pilgrimage, made those older dead-and-gone bands of pilgrims astonis.h.i.+ngly real. On the tops of bastions, in the clefts on the rocks, beneath the glorious walls of La Merveille, or perilously lodged on the crumbling cornice of a tourelle, numerous rude altars had been hastily erected. The crude blues and scarlets of banners were fluttering, like so many pennants, in the light breeze. Beneath the improvised altar-roofs--strips of gay cloth stretched across poles stuck into the ground--were groups not often seen in these less fervent centuries.

High up, mounted on the natural pulpit, formed of a bit of rock, with the rude altar before him with its bits of scarlet cloth covered with cheap lace, stood or knelt the priest. Against the wide blue of the open heaven his figure took on an imposing splendor of mien and an unmodern impressiveness of action. Beneath him knelt, with bowed heads, the groups of the peasant pilgrims; the women, with murmuring lips and clasped hands, their strong, deeply-seamed faces outlined with the precision of a Francesco painting against the gray background of a giant ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

Three times did the vision of St. Michael 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 ma.s.s that has grown out of that command before he is quite certain that the splendor of Mont St. Michel is real, and not part of a dream!

Whether one enters through the dark magnificence of the great portals of the Chatelet; whether one mounts the fortified stairway, pa.s.sing into the Salle des Gardes, pa.s.sing onward from dungeon to fortified bridge to gain the abbatial residence; whether one leaves the vaulted splendor of oratories for aerial pa.s.sageways, 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 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 pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce I have yet to find under other vaulted chambers. The gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.tress, or that lies p.r.o.ne 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.

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 a tremendously high mental pressure; of impressions, emotions, sensations crowding upon the mind; of one's whole meager outfit of memory, of poetic equipment, and of imaginative furnis.h.i.+ng being unequal to the demand made by even the most hurried tour of the great buildings, or the most flitting review of the n.o.ble ma.s.sing 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 pa.s.s and repa.s.s across that glorious mise-en-scene.

For, in a certain sense, I know no other medieval ma.s.s 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 sh.e.l.ls on their mantles make the eyes blink, as the groups gather about the great chimneys, or wander through the column-broken s.p.a.ce.

Behind this dazzling cortege, up the steep steps of the narrow streets, swarm other groups--the medieval pilgrim host that rushes into 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 va.s.sal 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 s.h.i.+fting sands below, as on bra.s.s, how indelibly fixt 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.

CAEN[A]

[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical Tour in France and Germany."]

BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN

Let us begin, therefore, with the Abbey of St. Stephen; for it is the n.o.blest and most interesting on many accounts. It is called by the name of that saint, inasmuch as there stood formerly a chapel, on the same site, dedicated to him. The present building was completed and solemnly dedicated by William the Conqueror, in the presence of his wife, his two sons Robert and William, his favorite, Archbishop Lanfranc; John, Archbishop of Rouen, and Thomas, Archbishop of York--toward the year 1080; but I strongly suspect, from the present prevailing character of the architecture, that nothing more than the west front and the towers upon which the spires rest remain of its ancient structure. The spires, as the Abbe De La Rue conjectures, and as I should also have thought, are about two centuries later than the towers.

The outsides of the side aisles appear to be of the thirteenth, rather than of the end of the eleventh, century. The first exterior view of the west front, and of the towers, is extremely interesting from the gray and clear tint, as well as excellent quality, of the stone, which, according to Huet, was brought partly from Vaucelle and partly from Allemagne. One of the corner abutments of one of the towers has fallen down and a great portion of what remains seem to indicate rapid decay. The whole stands indeed greatly in need of reparation. Ducarel, if I remember rightly, has made, of this whole front, a sort of elevation as if it were intended for a wooden model to work by, having all the stiffness and precision of an erection of forty-eight hours'

standing only. The central tower is of very stunted dimensions, and overwhelmed by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. This, in fact, was the consequence of the devastations of the Calvinists; who absolutely sapped the foundation of the tower, with the hope of overwhelming the whole choir in ruin--but a part only of their malignant object was accomplished. The component parts of the eastern extremity are strangely and barbarously miscellaneous. However, no good commanding exterior view can be obtained from the place, or confined square, opposite the towers.

But let us return to the west front; and, opening the unfastened green baize covered door, enter softly and silently into the venerable interior--sacred even to the feelings of Englishmen. Of this interior, very much is changed from its original character. The side aisles retain their flattened arched roofs and pillars; and in the nave you observe those rounded pilasters--or altorilievo-like pillars--running from bottom to top, which are to be seen in the Abbey of Jumieges. The capitals of these long pillars are comparatively of modern date.

To the left on entrance, within a side chapel, is the burial place of Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror. The tombstone attesting her interment is undoubtedly of the time. Generally speaking, the interior is cold, and dull of effect. The side chapels, of which not fewer than sixteen encircle the choir, have the discordant accompaniments of Grecian bal.u.s.trades to separate them from the choir and nave.

To the right of the choir, in the sacristy, I think, is hung the huge portrait, in oil, within a black and gilt frame, of which Ducarel has published an engraving, on the supposition of its being the portrait of William the Conqueror. But nothing can be more ridiculous than such a conclusion. In the first place, the picture itself, which is a palpable copy, can not be older than a century; and in the second place, were it an original performance, it could not be older than the time of Francis I. In fact, it purports to have been executed as a faithful copy of the figure of King William, seen by the Cardinals in 1522, who were seized with a sacred frenzy to take a peep at the body as it might exist at that time. The costume of the oil painting is evidently that of the period of our Henry VIII.; and to suppose that the body of William--even had it remained in so surprisingly perfect a state as Ducarel intimates, after an interment of upward of four hundred years--could have presented such a costume, when, from Ducarel's own statement, another whole-length representation of the same person is totally different--and more decidedly of the character of William's time--is really quite a reproach to any antiquary who plumes himself upon the possession even of common sense.

In the middle of the choir, and just before the high altar, the body of the Conqueror was entombed with great pomp; and a monument erected to his memory of the most elaborate and costly description. Nothing now remains but a flat, black marble slab, with a short inscription, of quite a recent date....

You must now attend me to the most interesting public building, perhaps all things considered, which is to be seen at Caen. I mean the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, or L'Abbaye aux Dames. This abbey was founded by the wife of the Conqueror, about the same time that William erected that of St. Stephen. Ducarel's description of it, which I have just seen in a copy of the "Anglo-Norman Antiquities," in a bookseller's shop, is sufficiently meager. His plates are also sufficiently miserable: but things are strangely altered since his time. The nave of the church is occupied by a manufactory for making cordage, or twine: and upward of a hundred lads are now busied in their flaxen occupations, where formerly the nun knelt before the cross, or was occupied in auricular confession.

The entrance at the western extremity is entirely stopt up; but the exterior gives manifest proof of an antiquity equal to that of the Abbey of St. Stephen. The upper part of the towers are palpably of the fifteenth or, rather, of the early part of the sixteenth century. I had no opportunity of judging of the neat pavement of the floor of the nave, in white and black marble, as noticed by Ducarel, on account of the occupation of this part of the building by the manufacturing children; but I saw some very ancient tombstones, one, I think, of the twelfth century, which had been removed from the nave or side aisles, and were placed against the sides of the north transept.

The nave is entirely walled up from the transepts, but the choir is fortunately preserved; and a more perfect and interesting specimen of its kind, of the same antiquity, is perhaps nowhere to be seen in Normandy. All the monuments as well as the altars, described by Ducarel, are now taken away. Having ascended a stone staircase, we got into the upper part of the choir, above the first row of pillars--and walked along the wall. This was rather adventurous, you will say; but a more adventurous spirit of curiosity had nearly proved fatal to me; for, on quitting daylight, we pursued a winding stone staircase, in our way to the central tower--to enjoy from hence a view of the town.

I almost tremble as I relate it.

There had been put up a sort of temporary wooden staircase, leading absolutely to nothing; or, rather, to a dark void s.p.a.ce. I happened to be foremost in ascending, yet groping in the dark--with the guide luckily close behind me. Having reached the topmost step, I was raising my foot to a supposed higher or succeeding step--but there was none. A depth of eighteen feet at least was below me. The guide caught my coat, as I was about to lose my balance, and roared out, "Wait--Stop!" The least balance or inclination, one way or the other, is sufficient, upon these critical occasions; when luckily, from his catching my coat, and pulling me, in consequence, slightly backward, my fall and my life, were equally saved! I have reason from henceforth to remember the Abbey aux Dames at Caen.

I gained the top of the central tower, which is not of equal alt.i.tude with those of the western extremity, and from hence surveyed the town, as well as the drizzling rain would permit. I saw enough, however, to convince me that the site of this abbey is fine and commanding.

Indeed, it stands nearly upon the highest ground in the town. Ducarel had not the glorious ambition to mount to the top of the tower; nor did he even possess that most commendable of all species of architectural curiosity, a wish to visit the crypt. Thus, in either extremity, I evinced a more laudable spirit of enterprise than did my old-fas.h.i.+oned predecessor. Accordingly, from the summit, you must accompany me to the lowest depth of the building. I descended by the same somewhat intricate route, and I took especial care to avoid all "temporary wooden staircase." The crypt, beneath the choir, is perhaps of yet greater interest and beauty than the choir itself. Within an old, very old, stone coffin--at the further circular end--are the pulverized remains of one of the earliest abbesses. I gazed around with mixed sensations of veneration and awe, and threw myself back into centuries past, fancying that the shrouded figure of Maltilda herself glided by, with a look as if to approve of my antiquarian enthusiasm!

Having gratified my curiosity by a careful survey of the subterranean abode, I revisited the regions of daylight, and made toward the large building, now a manufactory, which in Ducarel's time had been a nunnery. The revolution has swept away every human being in the character of a nun; but the director of the manufactory showed me, with great civility, some relics of old crosses, rings, veils, lacrimatories, etc., which had been taken from the crypt I had recently visited. These relics savored of considerable antiquity. Tom Hearne would have set about proving that they must have belonged to Matilda herself; but I will have neither the presumption nor the merit of attempting this proof. They seemed, indeed, to have undergone half a dozen decompositions. Upon the whole, if our Antiquarian Society, after having exhausted the cathedrals of their own country, should ever think of perpetuating the princ.i.p.al ecclesiastical edifices of Normandy, by means of the art of engraving, let them begin their labors with the Abbey aux Dames at Caen.

DOWN THE RIVER TO BORDEAUX[A]

[Footnote A: From "A Tour Through the Pyrenees." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1873.]

BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

The river is so fine that, before going to Bayonne, I have come down as far as Royan. s.h.i.+ps heavy with white sails ascend slowly on both sides of the boat. At each gust of wind they incline like idle birds, lifting their long wings and showing their black bellies. They run slantwise, then come back; one would say that they felt the better for being in this great fresh-water harbor; they loiter in it and enjoy its peace after leaving the wrath and inclemency of the ocean.

The banks, fringed with pale verdure, glide right and left, far away to the verge of heaven; the river is broad like a sea; at this distance you might think you had seen two hedges; the trees dimly lift their delicate shapes in a robe of bluish gauze; here and there great pines raise their umbrellas on the vapory horizon, where all is confused and vanis.h.i.+ng; there is an inexpressible sweetness in these first hues of the timid day, softened still by the fog which exhales from the deep river.