AT the foot of a group of tall pointed limestone rocks, which seemed to be much higher than the seventy-five feet ascribed to them, nestled this most theatrical looking little town on the river Meuse, which winds in and out most charmingly through a district once covered with dense forests. All about were beautiful gorges between which the river rushed noisily, now following the base of a precipice of solid limestone, and again laving the roots of large trees growing luxuriantly on the slaty banks. Each of these valleys, each breach in the limestone wall, was overgrown with lush verdure, contrasting most strikingly with the dark brown or gray tones of the cliffs. Hereabouts small towns and hamlets, with scant room for the old houses and mills clinging to the steeps, thickly occupied the spaces between the rocks and the rushing stream.

This small town of St. Mihiel, with its population of about eight thousand inhabitants, is said to have grown up around an ancient abbey dedicated to St. Michael, established here by some pious monks in the eighth century, but the landlord of the HÔtel du Cygne told me, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the abbey was not so old as all that; that M. le PÈre had informed him that the abbey had been built in the seventeenth century; the same year as the church; that he wished to set M. le Voyageur (myself) right in the matter; not that he cared how old or how new it was, but that he, the proprietor of the HÔtel du Cygne, was a truthful man, and no one, least of all, a gentleman who had made such a long journey as Monsieur the American from New York—"bien intendu," should receive any but the most truthful information from him, proprietor as he was of the HÔtel du Cygne. Which long speech he delivered with appropriate shrugs, gesticulations, and uplifted eyebrows.

Mine host turned out to be an interesting personality. There were many such in these small towns on the banks of the Meuse. He was named Camille Robert Joseph Laroche, and not only was he a genial and valuable "raconteur," but he had a saint for a forebear. According to his tale, which I have no reason to discredit, more than three hundred years ago his ancestor bequeathed the entire family patrimony to the church, which in gratitude therefor promptly canonized him, insomuch that he now adorns the galaxy at St. Matthias Roche. For this great honor and distinction, said mine host, all the descendants had ever since been paying, for, deprived of their estates, they became "hoteliers" and "nÉgociants," their only wealth being the good will and esteem of the countryside. Thus I had the high honor at St. Mihiel of lodging at an inn kept by the scion of a saint.

It was pleasant to arrive at this pretty hill-embosomed town when evening was drawing on and the stars, like unto glimmering altar tapers in a vast cathedral space, were shining forth one by one.

I sat before the inn door upon a bench with mine host» who had lapsed into silence, and watched the crystal disk of the moon over the "Falaise," shining, with that peculiar tint which has no name nor likeness on earth; that large mystic peace, the charm of a village at eventime, brooded in the air: Truly God is known in the breath of the still woods; a very frankincense.

Some passing girls in groups who had come to see the arrivals by train, that puffing, cautiously moving train that had come from Verdun, with the mail, the writer, and a few "commis-voyageurs," several soldiers on leave, and three shovel-hatted priests lent some animation to the street.

Each girl, chattering and laughing, was knitting industriously. Their eyes were bright and blue; their hair, gathered with gay ribbons into knots, was sunny: they seemed care-free.

The great gray limestone pointed rocks stand sentry over St. Mihiel. Upon one stands a Calvary. There were fragmented castles round about. Each dominated a ridge, stretching away like a line of bulwarks for the nestling towns between. I found, in the days of exploration that followed my arrival, that facing beyond the thread of the river, an amphitheater of great beeches, tier upon tier, ensconced all.

One might fancy a couchant lion on guard here, the old town lying snug between its outstretched paws, or to use another simile as if it had been cast down by giant hands and caught in the cleft.

The town lay in somewhat the shape of a T, the head-stroke turned downwards on both sides; the upright formed by the long nestling town of the valley, the cross bar by the bowed overspread of habitations at the valley's mouth, one thronged crescent of river, road, and terraced verdancy. Just at the point of junction in the nailhead was a small convent garden, all scarlet, pink, white and dazzling emerald green. One would think this quiet, rident town, looking down upon it by morning light from the Calvary on the limestone pinnacle, a very sanctuary home of dreams. On the contrary, it was only a more or less prosaic manufacturing town to the inhabitants who lived among all this picturesqueness without realizing it. Listening from my perch at the foot of the Calvary on the "Falaise," I could hear the hum of looms.

At the clang of the midday Angelus they stopped short for the brief hour of rest and repast. For a thousand years some of the old walls had lain much as I saw them, for St. Mihiel figures in territorial documents of a. d. 950. It is said that there was a time when the outstretched paws of the lion were joined by huge stone-turreted walls. These closed in the town and made a sanctuary. The Barons of St. Mihiel were greatly distinguished personages; they played a noble part in the Crusades. I found their records quaintly set forth upon tombs in archaic words, the meaning of which was often entirely puzzling and obscure. I made notes of these names and dates, but they were carelessly mislaid. Should one be curious about them, I doubt not that Froissart has recorded them in all their state and glory. St. Mihiel claimed the usual list of heroes and warriors, and her claim was granted without question.

The old market place was graced by lime trees, and the ruined walls were overgrown with ivy and vine of luxuriant leafage, hiding crack and gap cunningly. The aged towers still cleaved to the rock by leave of the roots of beech and fir tree, whose spreading roots are more lenient foes to masonry, perhaps, than German mines. Imagine the great empty shell of the donjon, with a rugged faÇade, ivy grown and rook-haunted, a ruined chapel-apse with its suspended "piscina and aumbry," (thus named for me correctly by a scholarly architect friend, else I should not have known how to call them), its Gothic columns and arches; this sheer wall overhung the town perilously.

There was a story told of the old bell's tolling at the death of a child. Within the donjon is the remains of the well, fifty feet deep. In olden days a young chatelaine threw herself down this well, her child in her arms, to escape the brutality of the besiegers, in the fourteenth—or was it the thirteenth?—century. There were twin brothers who did the same, in some remote period, after refusing to open the gates to Wenceslaus, or was it Baldwin of the Iron Arm*? There was a cavern at the bottom where the knights-proprietors hid their gains during the sieges. All these and many other tales of fear, blood and bravery were told at St. Mihiel.

Some years ago, they said, a young maid drawing water from the well, discovered a golden bracelet at the bottom of the bucket; but beyond a few fragments of bone and some pieces of rusty iron that is all that has been discovered of treasure.

It was said that the great hidden treasure is guarded by an immense serpent, which, when any one was so foolhardy as to attempt its recovery, blew out his candles and then devoured him at leisure. On the night before Maundy Thursday, at the hour of twelve, the master knight, clad all in his Templar's armor regalia, and bearing the scarlet cross upon his breast, rides the ruins with his cohort: but to no one save a true and devout Catholic was this vision vouchsafed, so it was said. St. Mihiel was unusually quaint in many ways.

One did not find sheep grazing anywhere. When by some rare chance they were brought to town by a drover, the sensation produced was equal to that which might be caused by the appearance of an elephant or a camel. Children ran after the poor frightened dusty things, tugging at their wool, some trying to climb upon their backs, and the whole square was in an uproar. There were plenty of pigs about, and these, curiously, were in charge of a professional pig handler, who took them to pasture, and cared for them for a weekly wage. It was not uncommon on a morning ramble to come upon a drove of them occupying the whole road to the limit of space: a symphony in pink amid a cloud of dust.

The little town was the residence of the great Cardinal de Retz, who is said to have written his memoirs here. The Rue Notre Dame, which led to the ancient abbey, and the church of St. Michael, had some very fine old fifteenth century houses, which were still (in 1910) in an excellent state of preservation. The great church dated in part from the seventeenth century, and contained a remarkable statue of the Madonna, attributed to Ligier Richier, a pupil of Michelangelo, who also carved the noted sepulchral monument of RenÉ de ChÂlons, Prince of Orange, in the church of St. Pierre at Bar-le-Duc. There was here too, a figure of a child surrounded by skulls, with two of which she was playing. Said to be by Jean Richier, this was a most beautiful piece of seventeenth century miniature work.

The Madonna mentioned above was depicted as fainting in the arms of St. John, the pose being most remarkable. One of the curiosities of the old church was the remains of a stone rood loft, a structure said by architects to be very rarely met with. The ruined remains of the abbey at the east end of the church were found near some sort of public offices, which should have been cleared away so that they might be seen the better. In the Rue des IngÉnieurs was the house of the sculptor, Ligier Richier, dated 1538. And in the church of St. SepulcrÉ was the famous tomb by this master, consisting of thirteen figures, showing the Virgin, Mary Cleopas and John, and some dice players, all of great realism and character.

This whole region is filled with legend, related with such great circumstantial detail that one might not venture, on pain of giving offense, to show disbelief, no matter how fantastic the story. There was one curious old house which I saw in the Rue de la Vaux, which had a rude frieze of great animals below its roof, the effect being so singular as to be well nigh unbelievable. What its history or origin I was unable to discover. Indeed much mystery was made of it, when I inquired; much as if I had asked an indiscreet question. So I desisted.

In the neighborhood were the most delightful walks and rambles, overgrown with verdure, leading past small farmsteads embosomed in thick forests, in a region filled with myth and legend.

Following the course of the Meuse, dotted with small mills taking toll of her one by one, whose splashing mossy wheels she cheerfully spins; eddying here and there, bright gardens, one was led to a certain gushing fountain, under a shelving bay of ferny rock, and this was named "the Easter fountain." It would be strange indeed if a fountain in this region had not a story connected with it. This one was no exception, and here follows this story of the Easter fountain, as told by Brother Antoine of St. Mihiel.

In the thirteenth century of our redemption Count Reni, in the castle on the heights, governed this region; at Commercy reigned Count Alan. A common sorrow bound the two to friendship: their young wives had faded in their first bloom. The chÂtelaine of Reni had left a boy of four years, and the Lady Elsa a girl baby at the cost of her life. This babe, sweet souvenir, was also named Elsa by her mourning, inconsolable father. All fÊtes and celebrations were thenceforth banished from the two castles, the lords of which sought comfort only in the high and holy offices of the Church, and in mutual companionship. Pope HonorÉ, at the call of John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, summoned all knights to the Holy Crusade. In this call the two bereft counts found the command of the Most High. Burying their grief in the forests of St. Mihiel, they set their affairs in order, gave over their domains to the care of overseers, and taking down shield and great cross hiked sword, ranged themselves "cap À pie" beneath the banner of their high and knightly leader, the Emperor Frederic.

Count Reni leaves his little Elsa to the care of her godmother and the abbess under the protection of his faithful aged squire, PÈre Carol. So passes by the period of ten or more years, young boy and girl grow up even as brother and sister, ranging the paths of the scented wood, hand in hand; learning together the lore of God's wisdom of flower and bird, and with the pious help of the abbess, the wondrous stories of the lives of the saints in those great vellum bound, brass clasped office books of the altar. Occasionally to the castle comes a wandering singer, who teaches them in song the doughty deeds of the absent soldiers of the Cross, naming their fathers gloriously. To these songs the children, now grown tall in stature, listened with shining eyes and panting breath. Thus they dreamed of the brave fathers they had hardly known.

Now that the young Count had come almost to man's estate, the old esquire thought of presenting him at the Court of Rheims. It was summertime, and the time had come for the parting. Elsa wandered alone through the wooded paths of the forest. But the once loved scenes of nature had lost half their charm for her. To pass the time she set about acts of devotion and mercy; visiting the poor huts of the woodsmen, dispensing tender charities to their families and teaching the children to pray to the saints and the Holy Fathers.

So passed the long months of summer and then came autumn in a blaze of red and golden leaves. Now the young Count, learning at the Court of Rheims that the two Counts were shortly expected to return from the Crusades in the East, returned to the castle with his retinue, and passing a small cottage by the roadside on the river bank, caught a glimpse of his former playmate and companion, on her knees, binding up the wounds of a poor charcoal burner, who had been injured by the fall of a tree trunk. But, lo: there was something in the expression of her face that was all new to him. Dismounting from his horse, he knelt before her, as to a saint. She was to him, all at once, an aureoled angel; a burning reverence overcame him, surging from head to foot, and he knew in that instant that for him time had brought its fullness to him, and that henceforth they were to be inseparable.

Entranced, he studied her face, so different to him from those which he had seen at court at Rheims, exquisite as those faces were. But this one! Ah, now it was clear to him that he had all his life never had a soul.

Elsa had gazed into his eyes unable to speak, her hands clasped upon her bosom. Now she gave a cry of gladness, but stopped all at once, for a new and strange quickening in her heart: Young Alan is transfigured in her sight, like unto St. Michael.

Alan seizes her hand, he calls her his sweet flower of innocence, and so swears to be her loyal knight even unto death; thus they remained hand in hand in ecstasy, while she prayed that the blessed mother watch over them forever more. At the castle the pair knelt before the good abbot, and then the old Esquire and the Abbess joined their hands and blessed them.

When the news of the Count's arrival at the coast, and young Alan's home coming went forth, the whole region rejoiced, the bells rang in the churches, and the vassals assembled to greet the young seigneur. From her bower in the lofty tower of the castle Elsa watched the road along the river. It was eventide when the sounds of approaching cavalry broke the stillness. Soon the great drawbridge of the castle fell with a clang of chains, and young Alan was clasped in the arms of the returned Crusader.

In the great banquet hall, hung with flags and trophies of the chase, the retainers thronged to welcome and acclaim their returned lord and master. Great flagons and cups of wine were passed, and the vaulted stone roof rang with the loyal shouts of "Long live Count Alan!"

But, strange to say, all was not well with Alan the Crusader. A dark cloud sat upon his knitted brow, and his worn thin hand bent upon the knob of the great chair upon which he sat. Elsa, in a very heaven between the joys, plied him with questions which he answered vaguely, and finally bade the churls to bring the torches from the walls, and gave the word of dismissal to the throng.

Much troubled, Elsa gave her white brow to her father's kiss, bade him good night; and very shortly the castle was in darkness, and silent save for the measured tread of the sentinels on the parapet.

On the following day the Abbess told Elsa that the two counts, once so inseparable, had for certain reasons become enemies, that the young Count of BrÉ must never more be named within the hearing of her father; and that henceforth she must forget her love for Alan, which now was quite hopeless. Broken hearted but obedient, the young girl, bathed in tears, spent hours before the altar upon her knees, but devoted herself to her father whenever he would see her.

Autumn came, and brought winter in its train. Young Alan she had not seen since the day of his return when they met at the charcoal burner's cottage in the wood. The fÊte of NoËl came in with a great snow storm. The Count no more went forth, nor did he attend at chapel. The abbot had admonished him upon one occasion—"If ye from your hearts forgive not those who—" whereupon the Count had struck the rail with his hand, arose, and left the chapel.

Affairs at the other castle were quite similar, and the lord had refused to offer his hand in friendship to his old friend Count Alan, swearing a terrible oath that he would wither away unshriven ere he did such a thing. Thus matters stood at the two castles, and two fond hearts were breaking, while pride held out. As to the young Alan, he had well-nigh lost his reason but for the kindly and wise advice of the old Abbot.

Then one day the aged chÂtelaine lay upon her death bed, with Elsa bathed in tears beside her.

"Call thee thy father, child," she said, "I have much to say to him before I go." Of the conversation between them nothing was ever known, but a marked change came over the old knight, after the chatelaine had been laid at rest beneath the altar in the chapel. He passed the whole night before the Stations of the Cross, and cried aloud for mercy, striking his breast with both hands.

In the morning he called Elsa and told her that he was to set out upon a long journey, and she begging that he allow her to accompany him he at length consented, and so together, with an escort, the old knight and the tender maiden set out through the forest.

It was the Holy Week of the Passion, and there were bands of pious pilgrims met upon the road, nearly all afoot, for that was the custom. Seeing this the old knight dismounted, and bidding the escort take the horses and return to the castle, they joined one of the processions, and continued on foot as far as the Calvary which was at the bend in the road toward St. Mihiel. Here they paused and let the procession proceed without them.

It was fair spring time; the fairest flowers bloomed all about them, and wild birds in the trees hymned the Resurrection of God. Elsa's heart sang in unison with the birds. She suspected the object of the old knight's pilgrimage.

When they were near the castle of Count Alan, all at once she saw on the road the Count and his son, arm in arm, approaching them. When they met there was an instant's silence, then cried out the old knight, "Alan! I come to thee!"

"And I was coming to thee to ask thy forgiveness," replied Count Alan with shining eyes; and they embraced, retiring arm and arm beneath the great beech trees, leaving Elsa and young Alan face to face. Elsa's hands were clasped upon her heaving bosom, her brimming eyes raised to the sky; then she knelt down beside the cliff in the moss, and young Alan knelt beside her. All at once Elsa's voice burst forth in the holy canticle, "Benedicite, opera Domini, Domino—fontes benedicite," and as she uttered the last words of the canticle, there burst forth from the limestone rock, just where their united tears had dropped, a tiny stream of crystal clear water. Soon this grew larger, bubbling forth like pearls into the sunlight, and making a channel for itself, flowed onward, dancing and leaping as for joy. And thus kneeling there at the fountain of their united tears the knights found them....

And this is the story of the fountain of the lovers' tears at St. Mihiel, where broken friendships were said to be healed by one draft of the waters, partaken of by both be it understood.

One wonders now as to the fate of St. Mihiel-on-the-Meuse; is that gray old church entirely destroyed by the rain of shells that has beaten upon it for more than two years? And what remains of the little town clustering against the two tall limestone peaks all clad with green verdure, where all was so prosperous and peaceful before the onslaught of the destroying legions?

Chatel Gate: Verdun

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