You take any seat
left, which the Frenchmen do not want, the horses are put to, and away
you go over a smooth sandy road for eleven miles, with the sea
crawling up on each side of you over the dunes.
Suddenly, without warning, you come squarely upon Mont St. Michel,
rising solidly five hundred feet from nowhere. There is a whole town
in this fortress, built upon this rock, street above street, like a
flight of stairs, and house piled up behind house, until on the very
top there is one of the most famous cathedrals in the world; and as
you thread its maze of vaulted chambers and dungeons and come to its
gigantic tower you are lost in absolute wonder at the building of it.
Where did they get the material? And when got, what human ingenuity
could raise those enormous blocks of stone to that vast height? How
those cannon swept all approach by land or sea as far as the eye could
reach! It would require superb courage in an enemy to come within
reach of that grim sentinel of France, manned by her warrior monks.
What secrets those awful dungeons might relate! Here political crimes
were avenged with all the cruelty of Siberian exile.
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