Mont St. Michel

From Highways and Byways in Normandy by Percy Dearmer, 1904.

Mont-Saint-Michel, said Victor Hugo, is to France what the Pyramids are to Egypt. This does not describe it; but then it is indescribable, for which reason one is quite grateful to another French writer for having said that it was the eighth wonder of the world.

We can only attempt to describe it by paradoxes. For one thing it is "amphibious," in the sea at one time, on dry land at another; the streams that run through the fangue that covers the great bay at low tide, are real fresh water rivers, and this tangue is as much earth as sand, as the greedy agriculturists well know. Once it was truly called St. Michel-au-peril-de-la- Mer ; for it was not connected with the mainland till the road was built in 1880, and many lives were lost, as indeed lives are still lost every year in the bay, by the treacherous quick-sands or the swift inrush of the tide. Again, it is not one rock but two, a hollow rock built by the hands of men upon the solid rock which nature left as if by accident upon the shore. And, indeed, this is the secret of its supreme beauty, that when the plans were arranged for covering its summit with monastic buildings, the men of genius who then ruled the abbey avoided the easy method of levelling down the top of the rock, and built instead a great system of vaults and walls about it, on which they raised the church with its cloister and adjacent buildings.

Mont-St.-Michel is, furthermore, as much a fortress as an abbey; it came to be garrisoned by soldiers as well as monks, with a governor as well as a prior and abbot; and it would supply illustrations for an almost complete history of Gothic architecture, military, domestic, ecclesiastical. Indeed, one could find no better place for the study of those processes by which Gothic art grew and was perfected. Therefore you should count your visit at this place by days, and not (as nearly every one does) by hours; you should go round the abbey again and again; and if you want to make a fuller study of the place than this chapter supplies, you cannot do better than buy M. Paul Gout's "L'Histoireet F Architecture Franchise au Mont-St.-Michel," which is on sale everywhere at the Mount, and will be precious, even to those who have not time to read it, for its admirable pictures and plans.

The heraldic cockel-shells of the abbey, which you will be pressed by many smiling importunates to carry away with you in some form or other, suggest another paradoxical reflection. St. James the Great owes his attributes to Mont-St.-Michel. For these attributes have been those of the pilgrim since the thirteenth century, and it was at Mont-St.-Michel that the pilgrim learnt to adopt his insignia. The scallops he gathered on the beach as souvenirs, and thus came to decorate with this symbol the wide cloak and flapped hat that he wore; the long staff was to test the firmness of the treacherous sands, and the little horn served as a signal for help if the fog or tide surprised him. The abbey adopted the cockle-shell with fleurs-de-lys for its arms, and the fine if rather inaccurate motto Tremor Immensi Oceani.

The history also of Mont-St.-Michel is based upon a curious element of paradox; for the natural scientist, instead of being relegated to the prehistoric ages, overlaps the historian. The present physical condition of the place came about during the Christian era. When the Romans ruled in Gaul, the bay was yet dry ground, traversed over some fourteen miles by one of their military roads, and covered by the vast forest of Scissey which stretched right away to what are now the Channel Islands. The Mount was then called (we are told) Mount Belenus by the Gauls in honour of the sun, and Mons Jovis by the Romans a name which survived through the middle ages as Monjou. In the third century the tides began to invade the low ground so that the Romans were forced to alter the course of their road. In the fourth century both the Mount and Tombelaine were isolated at high tide; and from the sixth to the eighth century the enlargement of the estuary where they stood proceeded rapidly. It is said that the great tides of 709 finally swamped the Forest of Scissey and made the great Bay of Cancale; but the Chausey islands were not severed from the mainland till the twelfth century.

History, or rather legend, takes up the tale somewhere about the sixth century, when certain missionary hermits came to live in the forests that remained and on the two mounts St. Michel which was now called Mount Tumba and its lesser neighbour Tombelaine. Provisions used to be sent them by means of an ass, till the beast was devoured by a wolf, whereupon in answer to their prayers the wolf was converted, and patiently undertook the transport duty he had so thoughtlessly interrupted.

The Mount was desolate enough in those days. Mont-Tombe seemed just the name for it, though indeed etymology would refer us to nothing more than a hillock for the true meaning of tum, tumulus, and Tumba. But when at the end of the next century it became the property of St. Michael, human life began to beat upon it and human hands to fashion it to beauty. It was given to the Archangel in this way:

A young noble named Aubert came into his inheritance, and immediately divided it into three equal parts. One part he gave to the Church, one to the poor, and the third he kept for himself. Then he took holy Orders, and consecrated his life to the service of God and men, till all the country talked of his sanctity, and when the opportunity came they made him Bishop of Avranches.

Now, Mount Tumba being a desolate place and yet within easy reach of Avranches, the Bishop repaired thither for rest and meditation; and when he was in retreat there and alone, the Prince of the Armies of the Lord appeared to him by night, and told him to build a sanctuary in his honour on the top of the Tumba. When day brake, Aubert was much puzzled to know whether it had been a mere dream or not. So he redoubled his prayers, fasting, and alms, and waited. A few days had passed by when the Vanquisher of the Infernal Serpent appeared again, and with some sternness repeated his command. But Aubert, remembering that we are told to try the spirits whether they are of God, did but continue to pray and wait. Then the Protector of Holy Church appearing a third time, reproved him severely, and for a sign touched the Bishop's head, leaving a hole in the skull where he touched it.

Aubert hesitated no longer, but began at once to build the Palace of the Angels. Now on the top of the Mount were two rocks, that stood in the way of the builders, and were so heavy that none could move them. So St. Michael appeared to a good peasant named Bain who lived near the coast, and told him to take his sons to the Mount and move the rocks. The peasant brought eleven of his children, leaving behind the twelfth who was an infant. But, try as they might, they could not stir the rock a hair's breadth. Then Aubert asked if the peasant had brought all, and he replied, "Yes, all, except for the baby who is with his mother."

"Go, my friend, and fetch him," said the Bishop, "for God often chooses the weak to confound the strong."

Bain fetched the child, and held him up in his arms so that he could touch the obstinate rock with his little foot. As he did so, it swayed and fell with a great roar down to the bottom of the Mount. There it lies under St. Aubert's chapel to this day.

Other miracles are related of the founding of St. Michael's great church. As that when St. Aubert was in doubt as to where to build, a heavy dew fell on the Mount and left the space dry that was to be the site of the church.

But there were no relics as yet for the sacring, wherefore the Archangel told Aubert to send some monks to Monte Gargano in the kingdom of Naples, where the famous Apparition of St. Michael had taken place. The brothers received the Bishop's blessing, and departed on their long journey. They were lovingly received by the religious of Monte Gargano, who gave them two relics to carry back, a piece of the scarlet veil which the Archangel had left and a fragment of the marble on which he had stood. During their absence tradition says that the sea made its last great effort and completed the isolation of the Mount.

A crowd of people gathered in their train as they returned through France, and the story goes that one of them, a blind woman, recovering her sight at the last village on the coast, cried out, Qu’il fait beau voir! Wherefore that place is called Beauvoir to this clay, as the map bears witness.

Then, in the year 709, St. Aubert made ready for the sacring. The relics were put in a casket on the altar, and the church was dedicated to the glorious Archangel. The Mount was called the Tombc no longer, but henceforward was known as Mont-Saint-Michel-ciu-peril-de-la-mer.

Still, the name of Tombelaine was sometimes applied to both mounts, and only gradually came to be confined to the remoter of the two.

With a name like Tombelaine in the mouths of a romantic people, it was inevitable that a story should grow up to provide an explanation of it in accordance with the peculiar etymology of such things. As a matter of fact there are two stories, and here is one of them.

A lady named Helene was betrothed to a knight whom she deeply loved. But when William the Conqueror descended upon England, the young warrior set off to accompany him. Helene stood-on the Mount to watch his ship depart, and as she saw all her happiness passing away across the waters her grief became greater than she could bear. She stood till she saw the white sails fade away at the horizon, and then fell dead. The monks with indulgent sentiment buried her where she had fallen; and every year on the anniversary of her death a white dove comes and hovers over the rock.

St. Aubert's skull became one of the most treasured relics of the abbey, and remained there till the Revolution, when a pious doctor saved it from destruction. At the beginning of the nineteenth century this doctor produced the relic from its hiding place, and gave it to the diocese of Avranches. It is now preserved in a reliquary at the church of St. Gervais in Avranches, and the hole which distinguishes it is of sufficiently unusual conformation to puzzle the osteologists.

For some time the Mount was only tenanted by St. Aubert's monks, but when the Normans began to ravage the coast, some fugitives fled for refuge to the rock, and founded the town which was destined to survive the convent. If the citizens of Mont-St.-Michel are anxious to claim a royal origin, they might put the cruel Hasting and Rollo by the side of the holy Aubert.

In 966, the monks, having become rich and corrupt, Duke Richard the Fearless replaced them by Benedictines. In 1017, Abbot Hildebert II. conceived the colossal scheme of building upon a platform brought up to the level of the top of the Mount by means of huge foundations. It is to him, therefore, that we owe everything, though he only lived to see the ground-work of a plan that it took five centuries to execute. His successors laboured on, preserving a unity of conception that was only possible in a religious community. In 1060, they are still at the substructure, though by 1080 they are building part of the nave; the Crypte de l'Aquilon was not made till after a fire in 1112.

With Robert de Torigny, who became abbot in 1154, begins the next great period of building; his abbatiate was a golden age for learning and piety as well as architecture. But the western towers and porch which he made have since fallen, and little remains of his work but the buildings that lay below them.

In 1203, the Bretons burnt the town and all the abbey buildings on that side of the Mount. The Abbot, Jourdain, turning the loss to gain, planned out the Merveille, and by his death in 1212 had built the lowest story of that wonderful edifice the Cellier and Aumonerie. Once more, the unity of the original conception was faithfully kept by succeeding abbots. Abbot Raoul des Isles (1212-18) continued the work, in spite of revenues cut off by spiteful Lackland; and while the English barons were struggling for Magna Charta, the next story, the Salle des Hotes and Salle des Chevaliers were a-building.

The next abbot, Thomas des Chambres (1218-25), went on with the top story of the Merveille, built the Refectory, and commenced the cloister. In 1228, the year of the canonisation of St. Francis, the cloister was finished. The whole Merveille had taken just a quarter of a century to erect.

It became increasingly necessary to protect so rich an abbey. Richard Tustin, abbot in 1236, had built by 1257 Belle-Chaise, the structure that covers the entrance and contains the Salle des Gardes. He also built the high Tour Nord, of the city ramparts. Needless to say, during the next century the work of fortification continued; it was the age of the Hundred Years War, and early in the century the abbey received a garrison and a governor. In 1356 the English began the occupation of Tombelaine, and for years the Mount was in a state of siege. Then, in 1386, came another great abbot, Pierre le Roy. He built behind Belle-Chaise the tower that is called after him Tour Perrine; and in front of Belle-Chaise he raised the formidable Chatelet, through which visitors still enter the abbey. He further protected the Chatelet with a barbican, now ruined, and a covered approach. After the Battle of Agincourt (1415) the English at Tombelaine became more threatening; then Abbot Robert Jolivet completed the ramparts, drawing the noble line of curtains and bastions from the Tour du Nord right round to the Tour du Roi at the entrance of the town. It is curious to think that all this work was done under the jealous eyes of an English garrison not two miles away.

In 1423, the English made a determined assault on the Mount, aided now by Jolivet, abbot, warrior, and traitor. They were repulsed. In 1434 (four years after the death of Jeanne d'Arc), they made a last supreme effort; eight thousand men attacked the heroic city, a breach was made in the Barbican; the English, rushing in, began to scale the town wall, when the garrison came out against them; another party dropped through the posterns of the eastern ramparts and took them in flank. After a combat of singular ferocity, the English were driven off. Two of their cannon lie in the Cour de l'Avancee, the first objects that a visitor sees,

When the Hundred Years War was over (1453), the abbey was well-nigh ruined by its efforts. Yet a great work lay before it; while the English were threatening (1421), the choir of the abbey church had fallen with a terrific noise, and now that peace had come at last, the Cardinal-abbot d'Estouteville made the crypt of the Gros-Piliers, laying thus the foundations of the magnificent Flamboyant choir. This was with the help of Louis XL, who founded the Order of St. Michael here in 1469, and held the first chapter of its knights in the Salle des Chevaliers. The Cardinal died in 1482, and two brothers, abbots in succession, Guillaume and Jean de Lamps, continued piling up the choir. By 1520 it was finished, and the crown laid on Mont-St.-Michel. It was only just in time. The new order in the person of Frangois-Premier paid a visit to the Mount in 1518.

Decadence came in swiftly now with the commendatory abbots. The first of these wolf-shepherds, Cardinal Le Veneur (1523), anxious to increase his revenue, hit upon the ingenious plan of reducing the number of monks "to have less to nourish." Then war settled again upon the abbey-fortress, the War of Religion. The Huguenots were attacking the abbey from without in 1591 (as you will read later on), while another commendatory Cardinal, de Joyeuse, was sucking its life-blood within. In 1615 a polite writer tells us that "God, regarding this poor abbey with favourable eyes, inspired the king, Louis the Just, to choose " Whom do you think? Henri de Lorraine, a child of five years, to be its abbot. In 1622 came, here as elsewhere, the Reform of St. Maur. They were excellent men, these reformed Benedictines of St. Maur, but somewhat given to vandalism.

The abbey ended in an irony of hollow splendour. The last abbot was Cardinal Louis-Joseph de Montmorency-Laval, Bishop of Metz, and Grand Almoner of France. Then came the Revolution.

Whatever the virtues of the French Revolution, it was certainly deficient in humour as well as indifferent to beauty. The abbey was turned into a prison, and for the avoidance of superstition its name was altered to Mont-Libre!

Its first prisoners were three hundred aged priests ; then in the nineteenth century came a succession of political offenders, among whom Barbes is famous for having jumped on to the rocks in a vain effort to escape. It was not till 1863 that the prison was suppressed, and by then the splendid pile was reduced to a state of almost hopeless ruin.

The period of restoration began in 1865, when the abbey was leased by the Bishop of Avranches who lent it to some missionary Fathers. In 1872 the Government took it over, and continued the works of restoration on an enormous scale. If we judge the case on its merits, I think it must be admitted that this restoration has been both necessary and intelligent. The place was too far gone structurally for mere passive preservation; but its detail, thanks to the hard granite, gave no excuse for destruction, and the building anew of those parts which had fallen gives us an opportunity of realising the ensemble of this mason's mount. Other places have detail as beautiful, but nowhere else is there such an entirety.

Thus, the history of Mont-St-Michel may be divided into three periods. In the first, it was ruled by an abbot, and that was the longest period. In the second, it was governed by a gaoler, and that period was sordid and short. Now, restored and frequented, it is the domain of King Poulard.

He presides over a fireplace of medieval splendour, where a dozen chickens turn slowly on two spits before a great log fire, while Madame, his Queen, receives us, her subjects, with that untiring, unruffled graciousness that is the mark of great personages. Yet King Poulard is not free from the misfortune which has beset so many Norman monarchs. His own flesh and blood are against him; and bitter is the feud between the retainers of the rival hotel-keepers, Poulard Jeune and Poulard Aine. As an instinctive Legitimist I have always paid my court to the elder line; and of that I can say that, had the Bourbons levied no heavier taxes, no royal blood would ever have stained the guillotine, and this very Mont-St-Michel might have been Benedictine still.

Indeed, one of the princely traits about the Poulards is that you need not pay at all unless you like. When the time comes to take your leave, there is no bill: you have to remember what you have had. The system works well, "Every one is honest who comes to the Mont," said the genial waiter to me, "St. Michel nous protege." Whereat I remembered one of the miracles that were wrought here in ancient times, thus described by old Dom Huynes in the heading of a chapter, Plu sie urs person ties ayans disne et n'ayans de quoy payer leur escot, r/wstellier cst pave miraculeusement"

When you arrive at the Mount you will naturally go straight up the single street of this most curious town. We will leave the abbey for the present then, turning off when we come to its entrance by the top of the street, and coming back by the ramparts.

The outer gate was once protected from the rush of cavalry by a palisade that ran across from the acute angle of the wall on our right, as we stand on the wooden bridge which now gives access from the road. At high tides visitors are brought in boats right through this gate and landed in the Cour de i'Avancee, the first court, where now is the stable for our bicycles. A glance round will show you what a tight place this Avancee was for an invader. The second gate leads into the Barbican, which opposed a second court to those who tried to force their way into the town. This barbican is now taken up by the Hotel Poulard-Aine: its kitchens and offices are on the left; on the right a multitude of modern pilgrims, with kodaks instead of gourds, sit at little tables over their bocks and absinthe. The third gate, the Porte du Roi, over which is a guard-room, has a fragment of portcullis still projecting from its outer arch: it leads into the town, the single street of old houses which were mostly hostelries for pilgrims ages ago, and are still devoted to a like purpose.

Still too, as of old the shops sell beads and shells and objets de piété to the crowds of strangers who pass between them; only the wares are now more numerous, and besides priests in their cassocks, and countrymen in their blouses, and quiet nuns and fat matrons, there are Englishmen in Norfolk jackets, and Frenchwomen in immense knicker-bockers to remind us that the world has moved. The curious old signs are gone, of the "Lycorne" which bestrides the street, the "Pot de Cuivre," the “Quatre-fils-Aymon," "La Truie que File" by the abbey barbican, where the soldiers used to drink, and "La Syrène,” though this last has its name written upon it. A house in the upper part of the town is famous as the residence of Du Guesclin's wife, but there is little left of it that has any interest.

The parish church rests its chancel on the street, and an archway underneath leads up to the cemetery. Many lamps and candles burn under the scutcheons and banners of its dark nave and single aisle, before the silvered St. Michael and before the black Madonna, which was set up in 1868 in the Crypte des Gros Fillers as a memorial of the original Vierge Niore that miraculously escaped the fire of 1112.

At the top of the street steps lead up to the abbey on our left. We can look over the ramparts, at the strange little forest which so hardily covers the north side of the Mount under the grand pile of the Merveille. We are here on the chemin-de-ronde, and we will follow it as it goes downward along the ramparts which stretch round the eastern side of the town. It is a magnificent wall, of tremendous height at this its south-eastern part, swelling into great bastions here and there, and crowned with a beautiful machicolation throughout its length. We can peer down through the chinks (narrowed now in most places) of the machicolation, and see how the wall "batters" outwards at its base. In all the towers we can see the traces of the floors which divided them into stories, and the later embrasures which were made for the use of cannon; in some there are fireplaces. The first and highest of these bastions is the Tour du Nord; the next is the angular Tour Boucle, with its subsidiary bastion a little further on: then, having always the queer houses and yards of the town on our right, we come to a low separated tower, the Tour Basse, which was remodelled in the eighteenth century. The next is called the Tour de la Liberté; and then, when we have passed round a guard-house and watch-tower, a flight of steps from the roofed passage or alure round the Tour du Roi takes us down again to the Porte du Roi, and the domain of King Poulard.

All the way we have had a splendid view of the great bay, the Baie de Cancale ; and it is from the Tour du Nord that we can best see one of the most striking sights of Mont-St- Michel, the incoming tide. For we are near Granville, which is the point where the tides have wider scope than anywhere else on the coasts of Europe. The waters of the North Sea, concentrated by the resistance of the Côtentin, meet those of the Ocean off the Cap de la Hague and sweep down into the Bay of Cancale. At low tide the sea lies far away (more than seven miles) from the Mount, at the spring tides it rises as much as sixteen yards, and twice every day it has to cover the huge tract of sand, three hundred square kilometres, in a few hours. It is estimated that the bay receives in six hours 1,345 millions of cubic metres of water, which comes in at the speed of a race-horse. This inward rush of the waters is called the mascaret.

At first all is still. The brown sands, scribbled over with blue rivers and tinned into bright green near the land, stretch out to the distant wooded shores of the bay, which sweep round from Avranches on its hill to the rocky headland of Carolles that just hides Granville out of sight. The sea seems to lie far out of reach, and near its horizon are the Chausey islands, looking like a misty procession of dim sea monsters. Then gradually the water begins to creep round the solitary rock of Tombelaine, till it becomes an island; though still the river at our feet runs busily seaward, as if determined to carry out its duties to the last moment. But it meets its old adversary at an edge of foam which is now gliding up rapidly from the distance, escorted by a cohort of white sea-birds. As the bore advances it spreads, tears over the crumbling banks of the vanquished river, throws thin films of water along the sand, rushes down little momentary water-falls to regain its level, and at last comes dashing up against the rocks of Mont-St.-Michel. Then it wheels round in turbid conquest of the sand, till it has covered all with a restless surface of water, flecked with foam. That water is now a light brown colour turning to blue, and on its surface the westering sun throws a shadow of the Mount, the spire and the pinnacled apse, the Merveille, a tree, and the bit of rampart where we stand, a huddled picture with the proportions of a monkish drawing in some old missal.

We have in our walk over the ramparts gained some idea of the abbey, and it will be best, before we go into it, to finish the survey by making a journey round the Mount, so that we may know where we are when we are taken over the complicated labyrinth of three stories which forms the abbey buildings. At low tide this journey can be made on foot, with the exception of two streams which are generally crossed on the back of a fisherman: at high tide visitors are rowed round in a boat, and unfortunate are those who miss this chance of seeing the waves beat on the rocky base of St. Michael in Peril of the Sea.

Before we start, let us look at the Mount from the road. We are on the south side: consequently the length of the church is before us on the top of the hill, its pinnacled choir on the right and its plain nave on the left of the new tower and spire. Beyond the nave stands the scaffolding by which stone is drawn up for the restoration works on to the platform that lies before the west front. In front of the nave is the smaller platform called Saut Gaultier, where we shall stand anon. From the building on which this platform rests there runs the slope along which the great wheel drew up its charges: this fixes another internal point for us. The great square buttressed mass of buildings that lies under the church is the Petit and Grand Exil (so named in the prison days) which contain the Abbots' and the Governor's houses. The Grand Exil is marked by the arches that connect its buttresses; it stretches round on the south to a square tower, the Tour Perrine, beyond which can just be seen the slender arcade of Belle-Chaise which contains the Salle des Gardes where we shall wait for our guide later on. All the abbey buildings stand clear above the houses of the town, below which runs the machicolatcd outer wall, disappearing round the east side over the Tour Basse.

Our boat will start from the town gate, and go westward. We shall notice that the Mount has three sides: first a rocky side, then a wooded side, and then (as we come back to the road from which we started) the side of the town. First we pass the Barracks, built in 1828 for the prison soldiers, and now used by the workmen of the restoration. The old walls have gone at this part, but the Tour Gabriel remains; it dates from the sixteenth century, and is pierced with embrasures for three tiers of cannon; a windmill used to stand on it, but now it is used as a light-house.

Next, on a rock that projects from the Mount, is the plain chapel of St. Aubert, monument of the babe's miracle. Beyond the Chapel of St. Aubert lies the north side of the Mount, draped with its miniature forest. A stone hut on the shore rovers all that remains of the Fontaine St. Aubert, the spring that arose at the prayer of the Saint, and formed the sole water supply of the monks down to the fifteenth century, when the cisterns were made. It was once protected by a strong tower,and connected with the ramparts by an embattled staircase, so that the precious supply of water might be safe. The barrels were hauled along a boarding up the stairs, then rolled to the walls of the Merveille and hoisted up to the Cellar by the usual wheel-windlass. It is needless to say that the fortified fountain became valuable as an outpost and a sort of postern by which sorties could be made and supplies admitted. Fresh water has always been scarce at the Mount, and it is still bought and sold in the street, whither it is now brought from the neighbouring villages.

While we are on this north side we can fix for ourselves the plan of the Merveille. It is composed of two huge buildings, held up by buttresses that die away on to the "batter" at the base. The eastern building has a higher roof, which covers the Refectory, easily recognised by its peculiar range of narrow windows close together. The story below this is the Salle des Hotes, its lights in pairs between the buttresses that do not reach beyond this story, since their support is not needed for the light wooden roof of the Refectory. The lowest story is the Almonry. The western building has no roof, for its top story is the open cloister, marked by a row of very small windows. Helow are the two tiers of windows which light the Salle des Chevaliers; the upper tier is varied by two circular openings, the lower by the two Tudor-looking bay-windows that give light and air to the isolated latrines a triumphant combination of use and beauty. The lowest story is the Cellar, which is sufficiently lighted by plain narrow openings. The other buildings which we saw from the road are not shown to visitors, but the Merveille is; and it contains perhaps the finest Gothic rooms in the world. They are often misnamed, as their original destination has been changed more than once, and it is easy to confuse them. Let us then be quite clear as to the arrangement:

Refectory (Rtfectoire). Cloister (Cloitre).

Salle des Hotes. Salle des Chevaliers.

Almonry (Aumonerie). Cellar (Cellier).

Continuing our circuit to the east and south-east of the Mount, we are now on the town side, which is protected by the ramparts whereon we have already walked. Just over the Tour du Nord are the twin crenellated towers of the Chatelet which guards the entrance to the abbey ; and as we go round we see its east side, beyond which Belle Chaise comes again into view. Below the town we follow the outside of the walls with the Tour Boucle, its bastion, and the Tour Basse, the Tour de la Liberte, and the Tour du Roi, next to which is the road whence we started.

The external features of the Merveille are made perfectly clear by the elevations of M. Corroyer, which are also reproduced in M. Gout's book. By their study you can realise the perfection of this thirteenth century Gothic. It is the majesty of perfection that makes the proud strength of the pile more winning and more moving than all the triumphs of conscious decoration. What is there but just huge walls, and buttresses constructed to bear the thrust of vaults, and windows arranged to suit the purposes of a dining-room, reception and workrooms, latrines, of a cellar for provisions, a cloister for exercise ? There is not a feature that does not serve some necessary purpose, not a dimension that is not seemingly inevitable, given the stature of a man and the needs of a monastery; no ornamentation, no straining after effect The vanity and theatricalism of French art have not yet come to mar its logical power and lucid expression.

It is the same with the town ramparts that next come into sight. The architects seem to have had nothing in view but the practical needs of defence and to have found beauty without seeking it. They wanted to make the Mount inviolable; and they succeeded utterly, for it was never taken. The beauty just happened. For beauty, the sense of form, of colour, of proportion, is natural to man, and only driven from the air we breathe by moral decay. Had the builders of these walls not set themselves with patience, courage, and singleness of devotion to their gigantic task, had avarice led them to stint the thoroughness of their masonry, or egoism broken the unity of their fellowship, the beauty would not have flowed into their work like this. They were free from the self-conscious vanity and shifting caprice which came in after years to throw a passing charm upon the face of architecture and to rot it at the heart. As the Renaissance developed, that momentary charm (which had indeed owed everything to traditions of honest workmanship) gradually fell away before the blindness of pride and the weakness of caprice, and was driven from the palace to the cottage, to survive only here and there in humble far-off things. This you may notice as you stand by the crowded shops in the Mount to-day, and find nothing beautiful to buy but the very cheapest kind of rustic Breton earthen-ware.

It would seem that nothing else but our own faults destroys the sense of beauty which should be a natural instinct. We often hear science set up, and the spread of invention, as our excuse. But if we used our inventions honestly, frankly, faithfully, they would not destroy the beauty of what we create. Indeed, there could be no better example of the scientific spirit than Mont-St.-Michel itself; science and art came to it as from one hand, and one hardly knows whether to call these medieval builders architects or engineers.

We are now ready to visit the abbey without becoming muddled. It is approached at present by the chemin-de-ronde, as the- old fortified staircase, the Grand Degre, is in ruins. We stand first in the ruined barbican (not the town barbican, of course, but that of the abbey), the outer line of defence. Before us are the twin towers of the fourteenth century Chatelet; on our right is the eastern end of the Merveille with the graceful Tour des Corbins at its south-east angle. There was surely never devised a more imposing entrance to a castle than the Chatelet, through which the steps lead up to the Salle des Gardes. The interior of the Chatelet was a salk de guet, and there is a recess just outside the Salle des Gardes with a little window for observations. The Salle des Gardes, which we now enter, is an irregular chamber broken up by steps which follow the natural declivity of the rock: it has seats in the windows where the soldiers on guard could sit and watch the shores. It was built in the thirteenth century, and forms the lower story of Belle-Chaise, of which the upper story is the Salle du Gouvernement where the officers of the garrison could meet to discuss their plans. In the Salle des Gardes we shall sit and wait for the guide who takes visitors round in small parties (between 8 and n, 12.30 and 6), giving intelligent explanations at the more interesting points. The visit takes an hour: it would take twice as long if all the buildings were visited; but, as it is, more is shown than can possibly be remembered, and we shall do well to make the tour more than once. There is no charge, only an upturned palm at the end of the visit.

The main points in order of the visit are Salle des Gardes (E), Saut-Gaultier (S.W.), Church, Cloister and Refectory (N. side), then down to the Crypte de l'Aquilon (N.W.), further down to the Cachots (the prisons), across under the nave by the Charnier to the great wheel (under Saut-Gaultier), back to the north side, Salle des Chevaliers and Salle des Hotes; Crypte, des Gros Piliers (under choir), then through the two lowest rooms of the Merveille and out through the Cour de la Merveille to the Salle des Gardes again.

Starting for the platform of Saut-Gaultier, we have the great buttresses of the apse on our right, and on our left the abbot's house and other dwellings known as the Grand and Petit Exil. They are not at present shown to visitors. Two bridges across the strange ravine gave the abbot access to the church; the stone one brought him to the église basse, the restored wooden one led to the église haute. Passing on the right a room with pretty windows and mouldings, we come on to the platform to look at the view of the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, which are separated by the little stream Couesnon.

The platform owes its name to a story that was told far back in the Middle Ages of un certain Gaultier, qui, désireux de montrer à son amante combien il la chérissait, se précipita du sommet d'un rocher très élevé dans les profondeurs de la mer, d'où il advint que ce lieu, qui se trouve en Normandie, est encore appelé Saut-Gaultier. It was from here that Barbes tried to escape in 1842, but, having provided himself with too short a rope, was recaptured, much damaged by his fall.

The church is in the hands of the restorers, who have built a new tower and copper-covered spire, surmounted by a gilt statue of St. Michael by M. Fremiet (it is spirited but a bit theatrical), and are now engaged upon the upper part of the choir. The condition of the Norman nave shows how inevitable restoration had become: some of its capitals are in plaster, and its crumbling vault is a sham of plaster and wood. Only four bays remain; the foundations of the other three are under the pavement beyond the eighteenth-century west front.

This chapter is already too long for me to attempt a detailed description of the church and the buildings that cluster round it. Those who have the time must read the third part of M. Paul Gout's book, which I have already mentioned. It is one of the sanest and truest architectural criticisms in the French language. M. Gout uses the intimate knowledge he has gained in the work of restoration to explain the real structural significance of the various features. The public, for instance, goes into raptures over the lightness of the stone-work of the fifteenth century choir: yet its real excellence lies in a certain cunning sturdiness and simplicity that conspires with the hard nature of the stone.

Again, in extolling the famous Escalier de dentelle of the choir, an ingenious and beautiful combination of flying buttress and staircase, people forget the main beauty of the exterior. The real interest, says M. Gout, lies much more “dans la puissante tenue et l’expressive netteté de la conception générale" There is no decadent gracility in this example of late Gothic. Its triforium, so pretty in appearance, is really arranged just to give the surest support to the weight of vault above. The Norman builders, for all their massive masonry, could not risk the pressure of a vault upon their nave; but the later architects, with their finished science of thrust and counter-thrust, could throw up their vault at this great height, and rest the whole mass upon the buttresses and the Crypte des Gros Piliers. The effect at first sight is one of daring: but in reality it is due to an " impeccable prevoyance." Everything shows (again to quote M. Gout) " une pens'ee nette, une mam sure, une experience consomm'ee" as well as a perfect sense of form and proportion.

Visitors are taken from the church to the Cloister and Refectory, which form the top story of the Merveille (pp. 144-6). You have already studied it from the outside; now you can realise how it lifts up on its shoulders a platform which enabled the monks to walk from their church to their cloister just as if both lay upon the broad fields. The church lies poised upon the summit of the rock, four bays of its nave and one of its choir resting upon the rock itself, the remainder upon a floor that is supported by the eastern and western crypts. Thus the builders of the Merveille carried on Hildebert's daring plan of raising a great artificial table-land, and they meant to extend it even further by a chapter-house, the entrance to which you can still see on the west side of the Cloister.

It is not necessary to point out the extreme beauty of the sculpture which is lavished upon the Cloister; this, and the remarkable lavatory, and the little windows that look out upon the sea, you cannot fail to notice. Every one sees that the Cloister is one of the loveliest jewels of the Early French period. But notice also the wise disposition of the double arcade, by which the roof and arches (these last of Caen stone to admit of finer carving) are supported with absolute security upon the slender granite shafts.

The Refectory was used by the monks of St. Maur in the seventeenth century as a dormitory, but there can be no doubt that it was originally built for meals, and it is probable that the dormitory then formed part of the building that once stood against the north aisle of the church; so that dormitory, cloister, lavatory, refectory, and church were all conveniently grouped on the wonderful plateau, to which a chapter-house was to have been added. Furthest from the door of the Refectory stood the abbot's table; near at hand the pulpit for the reader is contrived in the arcade, and at the south west corner there was a lift by which provisions could be hauled up or the leavings let down for distribution in the Almonry.

Looking down the hall you will notice that, though it is full of light, no windows are visible. This beautiful effect is also governed by structural reasons. It was important not to lay more weight than necessary upon the lower stories of the Merveille. On one part there is the cloister which is light enough; but here a large roofed chamber had to be built. A stone vault would have been heavy, and besides the architect wanted all the height he could get out of the roof; so he made a plain barrel vault of wood. The pressure is therefore uniform on the walls, and not gathered up at certain points. What was wanted to resist this pressure was an unbuttressed wall of uniform thickness, and as light as possible. A man working with preconceived notions would have grouped his windows in the usual way between imaginary buttresses; but instead we find an unbroken range of narrow lancets, which reduce considerably the weight of the wall but leave it great horizontal strength. I feel sure the planner of this original device also remembered how beautiful would be the effect of distributed light when the work was done.

The Salle des Chevaliers, perhaps the finest Gothic chamber in the world, is under the Cloister, supporting the cloister floor on its vault. Whether it is named after the Order of St. Michael or the hundred and nineteen knights who came here to defend the Mount against the English, it seems certain that it was built to serve as a great work-room for the monks. Here it was, with plenty of light and air, with immense fireplaces for winter months, and with sanitary arrangements that would satisfy the most exacting inspector of to-day, that they wrote and illuminated and studied the volumes which won for this abbey the name of the City of Books.

Gothic principles of construction are here in full play; the weight of the platform above is concentrated by the vaulting on to the pillars whose abaci take the ribs with so satisfactory an air of strength, and huge buttresses climb up the wall outside to catch the resultant side thrust. Gothic flexibility will be evident, too, when you notice that, in spite of its look of finished symmetry, the Salle des Chevaliers is irregular in shape. The vaulting of its northern aisle had to be so managed as to fit in with the receding wall that the older buildings under the transept had left. And it all had to be fitted into the native rock : this southern row of pillars does rest on the rock itself, while the two outer rows stand exactly over the pillars of the Cellier beneath, to which they transmit their burden through the distributing medium of another vault.

The other room of this second story has been fixed by M. Gout as the Salle des Hotes, mainly because it communicated directly with the outside and with Belle-Chaise by means of its side porch, and was disconnected from the monastic quarters, the two staircases and the lift passing straight from the Almonry to the Refectory without discharging into this room on the way. It was once richly decorated, and its three large fireplaces, as well as the beauty of its single range of slender columns, point to its being intended both for comfort and for dignity. Here, then the great folk who flocked to the Mount were entertained with the ceremony due to their rank : they were forbidden by the rule of St. Benedict to enter the rooms reserved for the monks, but they could walk straight into this hall, leaving their attendants in the porch, after they had paid their devotions at the adjoining chapel of Ste. Madeleine.

Like the other parts of the abbey, the Salle des Hotes was afterwards defaced and partitioned for the various purposes to which it was. applied. Under the commendatory abbots, when discipline was so loose that men and women were allowed to wander everywhere, it became a plomberie, where the lead was worked for covering the innumerable stages and roofs of the abbey. This name has stuck to it, as has also that of Refectoire; for the monks of St. Maur divided it by a wall into kitchen and refectory when they turned the real refectory overhead into a dormitory. In the eighteenth century it became a factory (as did also the Salle des Chevaliers a little later); then it became a habitation of gaolers, and lastly the dormitory for the fifty soldiers of the garrison.

The Cellar has three aisles of very unequal width, because its pillars have to stand directly below those of the Salle des Chevaliers, while the width of the place is reduced by the spread of the rock. Furthermore, its height has to be greater than that of its neighbour, the Almonry, because the Salle des Chevaliers is not so high as the Salle des Hotes, which is over the Almonry; and the vaults of those two Salles have to be on a level to secure the uniformity of the top platform. This extra height of the Cellier is the reason of its internal buttresses and massive pillars. Nothing is sought here but unadorned strength: the one ornament, the impost or rudimentary capital of the pillars, was necessary in order to support the wooden centering on which a vault is built. The place is just a cellar, admirably suited for storing provisions. They were brought in through an opening under the second window, the hauling being accomplished by a great wheel similar to that in Notre-Dame-sous-Terre. You can see outside the window an arch which is set between the two buttresses; on this a little draw-bridge rested, projecting sufficiently to allow the rope to drop clear of the batter of the wall. You have already seen from the outside how this winding apparatus was also used to draw up the barrels of water from the Fontaine Saint-Aubert into the Cellar.

Dearmer, Percy. Highways and Byways in Normandy, MacMillan and Co, 1904.

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