The best of our adventures into this tender country were with the French bridal tourists; they were certain to be delightfully human.  As we had had occasion to remark before, they were off, like ourselves, on a little voyage of discovery; they had come to make acquaintance with the being to whom they were mated for life.  Various degrees of progress could be read in the air and manner of the hearty young “bourgeoises” and their paler or even ruddier partners, as they crunched their bread or sipped their thin wine.  Some had only entered as yet upon the path of inquiry; others had already passed the mile-stone of criticism; and still others had left the earth and were floating in full azure of intoxication.  Of the many wedding parties that sat down to breakfast, we soon made the commonplace discovery that the more plebeian the company, the more certain-orbed appeared to be the promise of happiness....

Madame Poulard’s air with this, her world, was as full of tact as with the tourists.  Many of the older women would give her the Norman kiss, solemnly, as if the salute were a part of the ceremony attendant on the eating of a wedding breakfast at Mont St. Michel.  There would be a three times’ clapping of the wrinkled or the ruddy peasant cheeks against the sides of Madame Poulard’s daintier, more delicately modeled face.  Then all would take their seats noisily at the table.  It was Madame Poulard who would then bring us news of the party.  At the end of a fortnight Charm and I felt ourselves to be in possession of the hidden and secret reasons for all the marrying that had been done along the coast that year....

One morning, as we looked toward Pontorson, a small black cloud appeared to be advancing across the bay.  The day was windy; the sky was crowded with huge white mountains—­round, luminous clouds that moved in stately sweeps.  And the sea was the color one loves to see in an earnest woman’s eye, the dark blue sapphire that turns to blue-gray.  This was a setting that made that particular cloud, making such slow progress across from the shore, all the more conspicuous.  Gradually, as the black mass neared the dike, it began to break and separate; and we saw plainly enough that the scattering particles were human beings.

It was, in point of fact, a band of pilgrims; a peasant pilgrimage was coming up to the Mont.  In wagons, in market carts, in “char-a-bancs,” in donkey carts, on the backs of monster Percherons—­the pilgrimage moved in slow processional dignity across the dike.  Some of the younger black gowns and blue blouses attempted to walk across over the sands; we could see the girls sitting down on the edge of the shore, to take off their shoes and stockings and to tuck up their thick skirts.  When they finally started they were like unto so many huge cheeses hoisted on stilts.  The bare legs plunged boldly forward, keeping ahead of the slower-moving peasant lads; the girls’ bravery served them till they reached