Mont-Saint-Michel, better than any other spot in the world, keeps the architectural record of that ferment, much as the Sicilian temples keep the record of the similar outburst of Greek energy, art, poetry, and thought, fifteen hundred years before.  Of the eleventh century, it is true, nothing but the church remains at the Mount, and, if studied further, the century has got to be sought elsewhere, which is not difficult, since it is preserved in any number of churches in every path of tourist travel.  Normandy is full of it; Bayeux and Caen contain little else.  At the Mount, the eleventh-century work was antiquated before it was finished.  In the year 1112, Abbot Roger ii was obliged to plan and construct a new group in such haste that it is said to have been finished in 1122.  It extends from what we have supposed to be the old refectory to the parvis, and abuts on the three lost spans of the church, covering about one hundred and twenty feet.  As usual there were three levels; a crypt or gallery beneath, known as the Aquilon; a cloister or promenoir above; and on the level of the church a dormitory, now lost.  The group is one of the most interesting in France, another pons seclorum, an antechamber to the west portal of Chartres, which bears the same date (i 110-25).  It is the famous period of Transition, the glory of the twelfth century, the object of our pilgrimage.

Art is a fairly large field where no one need jostle his neighbour, and no one need shut himself up in a corner; but, if one insists on taking a corner of preference, one might offer some excuse for choosing the Gothic Transition.  The quiet, restrained strength of the Romanesque married to the graceful curves and vaulting imagination of the Gothic makes a union nearer the ideal than is often allowed in marriage.  The French, in their best days, loved it with a constancy that has thrown a sort of aureole over their fickleness since.  They never tired of its possibilities.  Sometimes they put the pointed arch within the round, or above it; sometimes they put the round within the pointed.  Sometimes a Roman arch covered a cluster of pointed windows, as though protecting and caressing its children; sometimes a huge pointed arch covered a great rose-window spreading across the whole front of an enormous cathedral, with an arcade of Romanesque windows beneath.  The French architects felt no discord, and there was none.  Even the pure Gothic was put side by side with the pure Roman.  You will see no later Gothic than the choir of the Abbey Church above (1450-1521), unless it is the north fleche of Chartres Cathedral (1507-13); and if you will look down the nave, through the triumphal arches, into the pointed choir four hundred years more modern, you can judge whether there is any real discord.  For those who feel the art, there is none; the strength and the grace join hands; the man and woman love each other still.