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Cherbourg and Mont-Saint-Michel, two of the newly ceded places, belonged to the dominions which "Count" Henry had purchased of his brother, and must be taken from him by force. William and Robert marched together against him, besieged him in his castle of Mont-Saint-Michel, and stripped him of his lordship. Robert received the lion's share of the conquest, but William obtained what he wished.
Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity." From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: "The Education of Henry Adams: a Study of Twentieth-Century Multiplicity."
Eight or ten years of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue except relation.... Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study in Thirteenth-Century Unity."
These souvenirs connected with a king rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic. He had, with his own hands, demolished the iron cage of Mont-Saint-Michel, built by Louis XI, and used by Louis XV. He was the companion of Dumouriez, he was the friend of Lafayette; he had belonged to the Jacobins' club; Mirabeau had slapped him on the shoulder; Danton had said to him: "Young man!"
The play was amusing in its absurdity, but it touched not the spectator, Henry Adams, who was content to sit in his protected stall and laugh in his sleeve at the play and the players and most of all at himself for laughing. Such is the implication; but I think it was not so. In the Mont-Saint-Michel Adams speaks of those young people who rarely like the Romanesque.
Lodge summoned, one followed with gratitude, and so it chanced that in August one found one's self for the first time at Caen, Coutances, and Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy.
The following legend, is the history of this foundation, in a few words. In the reign of Richard Ist, third duke of Normandy, two ecclesiastics of Rouen made a pilgrimage to the sepulchre of Saint-Sever, bishop of Avranches. The body of the saint was deposited in the neighbourhood of Mont-Saint-Michel, in a church surrounded by forests. A priest lived alone in the neighbourhood.
He began to write as a young man, and by 1139, about the time he reached the age of thirty, he seems to have completed his account of the reign of Henry I, which he wrote as an additional, an eighth? book to the History of the Normans of William of Jumieges. His more extended chronicle he had begun before leaving Bec, and he carried the work with him to Mont-Saint-Michel.
Fitzgerald, Rector of the English College at Rome, thus describes him: "He was a malcontent knave when he fled from us, a railing knave when he lived with you, and a motley particoloured knave now he is come again." The lonely fortress of Mont-Saint-Michel saw the end of a bitter controversialist, Noel Bede, who died there in 1587. He wrote Natalis Bedoe, doctoris Theol.
He was arrested and conducted to the gloomy fortress of Mont-Saint-Michel, where he remained for three long years shut up in the cage. The floor of this terrible prison, which was enveloped in perpetual darkness, was only eight square feet.
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