A RUN TO MONT S. MICHEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15169, 7 December 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

A RUN TO MONT S. MICHEL.

H. 0.8. "Lunch for eleven? My God! We shall be working all night." That, in its most literal of English, was what the landlady of the Hotel de la Mer excitedly remarked when with extreme mildness, we requested a hamper for the motor trip to M>nt S. Michel. Her subsequent explosion was beyond my further French. I closed ray mind and rested from the duty which " the party" had imposed upon us to "fix up the French part of the business." So that, really, when through my strained senses, there filtered a repeated query \ as to what we required for the lunch, I answered almost mechanically '" Sandwiches!" at which her hands were again upraised. " What kind?" " Oh! meat egg! anything!" More voluble idioms, quite beyond me! "If we cut the bread and the meat will you make your own sandwiches?" "Yes; certainly; and oh! if you please, some cake." "But yes!" with an approach to enthusiasm, " and some fruit?" We grasped at fruit, and won her to beautiful smiles by offering to find the wet portion of the meal for ourselves. , "It shall be ready at nine hours!" and tho waters of her surprise became calm as the summer night. At nine one car purred up with as much of a flourish as a chaffeur can make. Out came an unwiedly bundle of newspapers, containing many smaller parcels: Marie carried an armful of yard-long crusty, crisp loaves. But where was the' other car? The v colonel proposed a search expedition, and at last, since with much graphic hand play, the chauffeur said he knew not the route without the other man to direct; he was sent back to Dinard to look. Almost immediately the red. car arrived by another route. More delay, and at last, nearly an hour late, we arranged ourselves, sped away to Dinard —where the red car. broke hopelessly down. English people become cross where French people amuse themselves. Another green car was hurriedly summoned, amid tho laughter of many chauffeurs, Pierre assuring* us that the joke lay in the fact that we had, in the red car, merely engaged the notoriously worst car in France. Nor did we really see very much to cause M. Pierre to double up so convulsively. When we were fairly aboard the vedette with our two green 1 motor cars and our eleven English selves— -if ono may so include the children, with Dinard receding into the background, the remembrance of tho "red" chauffeur's embarrassment did seem rather ludicrous. Within half an hour we were bumping over cobble stones; and within another we were gliding on a ribbon of a road, whirring through flat, low-lying country, starred with windmills, and cleft by poplars. Mistletoe swung in abundance from the trees fringing our route; harvest pictures were spread on either side. Women worked with tho sickle, scarcely deigning a glance at the rushing cars fowls shrieked and fled with wings at strange angles, from under our very wheels. Pierre angrily ejaculated: and seemed to think that nono of these obstacles would sexist if only the road were straight as the roads about Paris. . These ; ridiculous curves and bends! But they were curely pretty? Pretty? Mon Dieu! Where is the prettiness of a road if one cannot see round, the. cornor? A horse would have shied at the next thing wo mot ,on the dusty ribbon that wound through this land of windmills and orchards, and harvests. A peasant woman was wheeling a clumsy barrow which contained three great round loaves of bread, each the size of a small cart wheel ,and when I 6ay ' 'cart" I mean something larger than the wheel of a motor car. At this distance, with our soft , two-pound loaves, the'size seems incredible. And the cider barrels! Cider being in Brittany the vin du pays ! as Pierre remarked very contemptuously, and added that a province which did not drink wine must be indeed poor ! Ho descended to no information regarding the surroundings. Bretagne! Humph! Cidre! Humph! Asperge!' Humph ! Still at Cancale, which he would show on the return journey, there were plenty of fishing boats and oysters ! The cider barrels 6tood by the houses: and they ranged in size from a gallon to one huge fellow outside a cabaret, as high as the doorway. We rushed on, through the level lands, marshy asparagus flats on the sea-side, wheatfields and stunted-apple orchards on the other: and once to our surprise, after we had grown accustomed to the sight of women wielding sickles, we espied a real machine, a chaff-cutter ; and a little later, a reaper and binder drawn by horses. Then we came nearer so that we could see the almost mystic pile of Mont S. Michel, and it reared its beauty so fragilely and yet so staunchly above the clean sea-swept sands that we were all silent. There are works of man in old Europe that compel one to reverence. Mont S. Michel is one of the wonders. Reared upon granite pillars hewn from the seaworn rocks at its base, the church rises, foundation beneath foundation, cathedral upon cathedral. Built on an island, built all over and upon it, so that there is no island except that which lies under the tower of masonry. It is as if the edifice, raised itself from the sea, a crowning monument of worship. Nothing is in the picture but this gleaming mitre on its base of rock: the level stretch of sand which encircles it, extends far seaward. A firm, dry plain of sand; and from it a crowned rock rising steeply up. But hours later, tho September tide which lies away in tho purple beyond will rush in "like the galloping of a horse," and once again the cathedral of Mont S. Michel will bo a fortress. The scaffolding of to-day shines white—for this great, monument is unfinished after centuries of work : it climbs higher and ever higher. Scanning it minutely, one may detect a wheel. From this, before the days of easy peace and tourist trippers, there used to hang a rope. A basket attached . drew up the food required by the monks from the peasants of the surrounding country. Could this firm, dry land be regularly covered by the tide? Our cars drove so lightly arid hardly over its smoothness; fishermen with huge baskets slung over their shoulders walked to the mainland, and neither left a trace. From the northwest side greenery covered the rock, until ii, met the cathedral's base : and from that, as we came nearer, wo saw the fortress wall wind down. Leaving the cars, we mounted through the gate, a steeplyrising, narrow, cobbled street, with tiny shops on either side and tho drainage running down the guttered way in the middle of the thoroughfare. We found the hotel of the famous omelets, its prestige now maintained by an American firm, etill with its huge, open fireplace and' Mother Somebody's omelets made to order. Wo straggled upward, searching the stalls for goods of the country, and found onlychina cats and brass-ware from Birmingham. What have Cheshire cats to do with a quaint French street leading up to a cathedral? A weariness of steps brings up to the doorway, with the accustomed sight of a blind beggar beseeching alms: a guide conducts us from hall, refectory, chapel to halls, refectories, chapels above; and above again. There is much ennui attending this guidance, one has it all over England. It begins with "This way, if you please;" it continues with strained necks and wearied receptive faculties, and 't ends always with the " pourboire," the

tip. Pity J It degrades one's artistic perceptiGuS. Beautiful creations are for silence, meditation, awe: and the memory of a guide, of partial education, expounding the age of this wall or of that screen, to a group of trippers hanging to his heels, with open. mouths and pretended interest, always_ brings the sense of annoying incongruity. With glances at one another of veiled derision, we hung back as long as we dared: S. Michel's is too much of a catacomb to risk the being lost in it we cursed guides and touts and all the tribe that for pence 'declaim, to ignorance abroad. . . '. We bought photographs. Shades of reverence ! They actually keep a shop in one of the hsvlis of this fantastic marvel : we, in due time, tipped the droning guide, we rewarded the beggar's patience; and we languidly commenced the descent, and ' eulogised the worshippers who toil up every hot summer Sunday to their masses. We found a new cafe with a spindley, spiral staircase: we opened our newspaper bundle, laughed at the lumps of crusty bread and the chunks of meat which constituted the landlady's sandwiches— for she had relented. For each •of "us there was a little parcel of gateaux—half a dozen very « fancy biscuits: - and for all there was abundance of hard greengages. Well! the men descended and Bought all the, syrupy and sticky patisserie in the window all fresh that day from St. Malo," and the only place in Mont S. Michel which was so enterprising as to import them also the only place which could make afternoon tea " a I' Anglais." Our men came again to the floor which shook under our tread, with them the "patisserie;" all the syphons of aerated waters, and the whole stock of German lager. We devoured everything. It was along time since seven o'clock coffee and a roll. Then we roamed again, giving a comprehensive order for afternoon tea: after which, the hour being late, we decided to return without seeing the galloping tide throw its protecting circle round tho famous Mont Saint Michel. Shall we ever forget the wonderful sight of Cancale with its hundreds of whitesailed fishing boats —oh! such hundreds of craft— all sizes from that of a cutter down to that of a yacht's dinghy; and does English. Margaret remember her entanglement about " des huitres " which Jean, their chauffeur, said were found on the rocks? "Sweets on the rocks? Nonsense!" declared her father when shft rushed to him with her newly-acquired information. "Sweets?" "No. Des huitres! Oh, Madame! dites lui! Yes Yes! Oysters!" After Cancale, women gleaning in the fields as .in that picture of Millet's solemn windmills turning to grind corn, waggon horses with huge collars of black or blue sheepskin, great woolly doormats indeed then through Parame and S. Malo once more, and on to the vedette! Four great heavy-bodied motor cars on one small ferry boat, a little thing, beside which the Goshawk is a giant! How it rocked and swayed How, cold the day had grown! and how.-silent . were our chattering children. Tommy and Ismay, and little Joan who spoke her French so prettily. Do you remember that day at Mont S. Michel? C