glistening waters of the rivers See and Selune that, at low tide, take
their serpentine courses over the delicately tinted waste of sand that
occupies St Michael's Bay. Out beyond the little wooded promontory that
protects the mouth of the See, lies Mont St Michel, a fretted silhouette of
flat pearly grey, and a little to the north is Tombelaine, a less
pretentious islet in this fairyland sea. Framed by the stems and foliage of
the trees, this view is one of the most fascinating in Normandy. One would
be content to stay here all through the sultry hours of a summer day, to
listen to the distant hum of conversation among white-capped nursemaids, as
they sew busily, giving momentary attention to their charges. But Avranches
has an historical spot that no student of history, and indeed no one who
cares anything for the picturesque events that crowd the pages of the
chronicles of England in the days of the Norman kings, may miss. It is the
famous stone upon which Henry II. knelt when he received absolution for the
murder of Becket at the hands of the papal legate. To reach this stone is,
for a stranger, a matter of some difficulty. From the Place by the Jardin
des Plantes, it is necessary to plunge down a steep descent towards the
railway station, and then one climbs a series of zigzag paths on a high
grassy bank that brings one out upon the Place Huet. In one corner,
surrounded by chains and supported by low iron posts, is the historic
stone. It is generally thickly coated with dust, but the brass plate
affixed to a pillar of the doorway is quite legible. These, and a few
fragments of carved stone that lie half-smothered in long grass and weeds
at a short distance from the railed-in stone, are all that remain of the
cathedral that existed in the time of Henry II.

It must have been an impressive scene on that Sunday in May 1172, when the
papal legate, in his wonderful robes, stood by the north transept door, of
which only this fragment remains, and granted absolution to the sovereign,
who, kneeling in all humbleness and submission, was relieved of the curse