nor with less injury, which is a great merit, honour
and praise to the King of France."

In the early part of the sixteenth century, Mont St Michel seems to have
reached the high-water mark of its glories. After this time a decline
commenced and Cardinal le Veneur reduced the number of monks to enlarge his
own income. This new cardinal was the first of a series not chosen from the
residents on the mount, for after 1523 the system of election among
themselves which had answered so well, was abandoned, and this wealthy
establishment became merely one of the coveted preferments of the Church.
There was no longer that enthusiasm for maintaining and continuing the
architectural achievements of the past, for this new series of
ecclesiastics seemed to look upon their appointment largely as a sponge
which they might squeeze.

In Elizabethan times Mont St Michel once more assumed the character of a
fortress and had to defend itself against the Huguenots when its resources
had been drained by these worldly-minded shepherds, and it is not
surprising to find that the abbey which had withstood all the attacks of
the English during the Hundred Years' War should often fall into the hands
of the protestant armies, although in every case it was re-taken.

A revival of the religious tone of the abbey took place early in the first
quarter of the seventeenth century, when twelve Benedictine monks from St
Maur were installed in the buildings. Pilgrimages once more became the
order of the day, but since the days of Louis XI. part of the sub-structure
of the abbey buildings had been converted into fearful dungeons, and the
day came when the abbey became simply a most remarkable prison. In the time
of Louis XV., a Frenchman named Dubourg--a person who has often been spoken
of as though he had been a victim of his religious convictions, but who
seems to have been really a most reprehensible character--was placed in a
wooden cage in one of the damp and gruesome vaults beneath the abbey.
Dubourg had been arrested for his libellous writings concerning the king
and many important persons in the French court. He existed for a little
over a year in the fearful wooden cage, and just before he died he went
quite mad, being discovered during the next morning half-eaten by rats. A
realistic representation of his ghastly end is given in the museum, but one
must not imagine that the grating filling the semi-circular arch is at all
like the actual spot whe