MICHEL, NORMANDY.]
The first glimpse of Mont St. Michel is strange and weird in the
extreme. A vast ghostlike object of a very pale pinkish hue suddenly
rises out of the bay, and one's first impression is that one has been
reading the "Arabian Nights," and that here is one of those fairy
palaces which will fly off, or gradually fade away, or sink bodily
through the water. Its solemn isolation, its unearthly color, and its
flamelike outline fill the mind with astonishment.
Mont St. Michel is by far the most perfect example of a mediaeval
fortified abbey in existence, with its surrounding town and
dependencies, all quite perfect; just, in fact, as if time had stood
still with them since the fifteenth century. The great granite rock
rises to the height of two hundred and thirty feet out of the bay; it
is twice an island and twice a peninsula in the course of twenty-four
hours. The only approach is at low water, by driving or walking across
the sands. When, however, one arrives within a few yards of the solitary
gate to the "town," walking or driving has to be abandoned, and here
the commercial industries of the inhabitants commence.
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