For a thousand years pilgrims have crossed these treacherous sands to lay their offerings at the feet of the Archangel Michael; Norman dukes and monks of the middle ages have paid their devotion at his shrine, and troops of pilgrims in all ages, even to this day, when a party of English school-girls come tripping across the bay, provided with a passport and a fee, bent upon having the terrors of the prison-house shewn to them as easily as the 'chamber of horrors' at Madame Tussaud's.
Before us, as we walk the last mile, the granite rock gradually becomes a mountain surrounded by a wide plain of sand, covered with clustering houses, towers, turrets, and fortifications, and surmounted by a Gothic church nearly 400 feet above the sea. There is a little town upon the rock, old, tumble-down, irregular, and picturesque, like Bastia in Corsica--constructed by a hardy sea-faring people, who have built their dwellings in the sides of this conical rock, like the sea-birds; and there is a little inn called the _Lion d'or_, with windows built out over the ramparts, from which we can see the shore.
On arriving at the island we pass under two ancient towers, and into 'the court of the Lion;' then to a third gate, with its towers and battlements, and frowning portcullis; and we see, as we pass, the lion (the insignia of the knights of Mont St. Michael) carved in stone, and set into the wall. We are received in the ancient guard-room by a 'young brother,' who has (shall it be repeated?) 'turned the guard-room into a cheerful bazaar for the sale of photographs, ivory carvings and the like.' We are on the threshold of the sanctuary, at the end of our pilgrimage; we offer up no prayers, as of old, for safe deliverance from peril, but we set to work at once, and 'invest in a pocketful of little presents, which another brother (on business thoughts intent) packs for us neatly in a pasteboard box.' We are shewn the apartments in the 'Tour des Corbins,' with its grand staircase, called 'l'escalier des exils,' and the crypt one hundred feet long, built by the monks in the eleventh century; we see the great Gothic hall of the Knights of Mont St. Michael, with its carved stone-work and lofty roof, supported by three rows of pillars, beautiful in proportion, and grand in effect, although the Revolution, as usual, has left us little but the bare walls; but, as we look down upon it from a gallery, it is easy to picture the splendour of a banquet of knights in the twelfth century, with the banners and insignia of chivalry ranged upon the walls.[32] But it is now a silent gloomy chamber, and the atmosphere is so close and the moral atmosphere so heavy withal, that we are glad to leave it, and to ascend to another story of this wonderful pile; through the beautiful Gothic cloisters, and out upon the cathedral roof, where we suddenly emerge upon a view more wonderful in its extent and flatness than anything, save that from the cathedral tower of Chartres; before us an horizon of sea, behind us the coast line, and the hills of Avranches; all around, a wide plain of sand, and northward, in the far distance, the low dark lines of the channel islands.