Legend Of Mont St. Michel
I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got an indistinct impression
of it as of a gray shadow outlined against the misty sky. I saw it again from Avranches at
sunset. The immense stretch of sand was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless
bay was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance like a weird, seignorial
residence, like a dream palace, strange and beautiful-this alone remained black in the
crimson light of the dying day.
The following morning at dawn I went toward it across the sands, my eyes fastened on
this, gigantic jewel, as big as a mountain, cut like a cameo, and as dainty as lace. The
nearer I approached the greater my admiration grew, for nothing in the world could be
more wonderful or more perfect.
As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of a god, I wandered through those halls
supported by frail or massive columns, raising my eyes in wonder to those spires which
looked like rockets starting for the sky, and to that marvellous assemblage of towers, of
gargoyles, of slender and charming ornaments, a regular fireworks of stone, granite lace,
a masterpiece of colossal and delicate architecture.
As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy peasant came up to me and told me
the story of the great quarrel between Saint Michael and the devil.
A sceptical genius has said: "God made man in his image and man has returned the
compliment."
This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very curious to write the history of the
local divinity of every continent as well as the history of the patron saints in each one of
our provinces. The negro has his ferocious man-eating idols; the polygamous Mahometan
fills his paradise with women; the Greeks, like a practical people, deified all the passions.
Every village in France is under the influence of some protecting saint, modelled
according to the characteristics of the inhabitants.
Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint Michael, the radiant and victorious
angel, the sword-carrier, the hero of Heaven, the victorious, the conqueror of Satan.
But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and tricky, understands
and tells of the struggle between the great saint and the devil.
To escape from the malice of his neighbor, the devil, Saint Michael built himself, in the
open ocean, this habitation worthy of an archangel; and only such a saint could build a
residence of such magnificence.
