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.
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