Mont St. Michel to his honor. How many a time must the modern pilgrim
traverse the stupendous mass that has grown out of that command before
he is quite certain that the splendor of Mont St. Michel is real, and
not part of a dream!

Whether one enters through the dark magnificence of the great portals
of the Châtelet; whether one mounts the fortified stairway, passing
into the Salle des Gardes, passing onward from dungeon to fortified
bridge to gain the abbatial residence; whether one leaves the vaulted
splendor of oratories for aërial passageways, only to emerge beneath
the majestic roof of the Cathedral--that marvel of the Early Norman,
ending in the Gothic choir of the fifteenth century; or, as one
penetrates into the gloom of the mighty dungeons where heroes, and
brothers of kings, and saints, and scientists have died their long
death--as one gropes through the black night of the crypt, where a
faint, mysterious glint of light falls aslant the mystical face of the
Black Virgin; as one climbs to the light beneath the ogive arches
of the Aumônerie, through the wide-lit aisles of the Salle des
Chevaliers, past the slender Gothic columns of the Refectory, up at
last to the crowning glory of all the glories of La Merveille, to the
exquisitely beautiful colonnades of the open Cloister--the impressions
and emotions excited by these ecclesiastical and military masterpieces
are ever the same, however many times one may pass them in review. A
charm indefinable, but replete with subtle attractions, lurks in every
one of these dungeons.

The great halls have a power to make one retraverse their space I have
yet to find under other vaulted chambers. The grass that is set,
like a green jewel, in the arabesques of the cloister, is a bit of
greensward the feet press with a different tread to that which skips