The two prelates presented themselves at the entrance gate as the clock of the great tower began to strike eleven, and were saluted by acclamations so enthusiastic that it seemed as if the whole Mount were bidding them welcome. They proceeded up the steep lane that winds upward between houses that look as if piled almost one upon another, and which date from three or four centuries back, low, square, and solid, and having for the most part only one story, plunging their foundations into the rock, and wedged, as it were, against each other, the better to resist the force of hurricanes and tempests. Here and there trees of thick foliage overshadow the narrow, winding ascent, which at intervals through some unexpected opening shows a vast horizon over the waters of the Channel, with its lovely islands, and the coast of France. The procession reached in due time the threshold of the ancient abbey, and, after a few words of warm and respectful welcome spoken to the bishops by the reverend father prior, entered the church. There is something unique in the beauty of this basilica which so nobly crowns the summit of Mont Saint-Michel, and of which the four extremities rest on four enormous arched vaults founded in the rock. It possesses all the essential parts of a great cathedral—nave, aisles, transepts, choir, and apse. The nave is Roman, the choir Gothic, and the aisles _Moresque_ or Byzantine. Boldly cut in granite, the architecture is as remarkable as the site. The nave was formerly two hundred and forty feet in length, but underwent an irreparable mutilation under the First Republic, when it was shortened by the cutting away of four of its eight transverse vaultings. It nevertheless remains singularly imposing—simple even to severity, but relieved by its triforium and a gallery with deep arcades. The collateral arches, which are somewhat narrow, have the horseshoe form usual in Arabian architecture; the transepts, like the nave, are Roman, but of more recent date; the choir, which is of the best period of flamboyant Gothic, very delicately sculptured, has in the clerestory a square window of remarkable richness; and in the apse, which is of granite, delicate lines of tracery spring upwards with exquisite lightness. On the keystone of its vaulted roof is the escutcheon of the abbey. The choir is surrounded by bas-reliefs representing the four evangelists, and a ship, symbolical of the church militant, tossing on an angry sea which cannot overwhelm her, guided as she is by an unerring pilot—_Fluctuat, non mergitur_.