Here prisoners
wore their lives away in black solitude, no ray of light penetrating
their darkness.
The story is told that one poor wretch was eaten alive by gigantic
rats, and they have a ghastly reproduction of it in wax, which makes
you creepy for a week after you have seen it. Nowhere in all Europe
did I see a place which impressed its wonder and its history of horror
upon me as did the cathedral dungeon of Mont St. Michel. Its situation
was so impregnable, its capacity so vast, its silence and isolation
from the outer world so absolute.
All Russia does not boast a situation so replete with possible and
probable misery and anguish such as were suggested to my mind here.
But the wonder and charm of the compact little town which clings like
a limpet to its base are more than can be expressed on the written
page. It is like climbing the uneven stairs of some vast and roofless
ancient palace, upon each floor of which dwell families who have come
in and roofed over the suites of rooms and made houses out of them.
The stairs lead you, not from floor to floor, but from bakery to
carpenter-shop, from the blacksmith's to the telegraph-office.
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