tion; the ruins
lie in all the splendor of their downfall.

I have not replaced one stone--walled up one lizard--the house-leek, St.
John's-wort, bell-flower, sea-green saxifrage, woody nightshade and blue
popion flower have engaged in a struggle upon the walls of arabesques,
and carvings which would discourage the most patient ornamental
sculptor. But above all, a marvel of nature attracts your admiring gaze:
it is a gigantic ivy, dating back at least to Richard Coeur de Lion, it
defies by the intricacy of its windings those geneological trees of
Jesus Christ, which are seen in Spanish churches; the top touching the
clouds, and its bearded roots embedded in the bosom of the patriarchal
Abraham; there are tufts, garlands, clusters, cascades of a green so
lustrous, so metallic, so sombre and yet so brilliant, that it seems as
if the whole body of the old building, the whole life of the dead abbey
had passed into the veins of this parasitic friend, which smothers with
its embrace, holding in place one stone, while it dislodges two to plant
its climbing spurs.

You cannot imagine what tufted elegance, what richness of open-work
tracery this encroachment of the ivy throws upon the rather gaunt and
sharp gable-end of the building, which on this front has for ornament
but four narrow-pointed windows, surmounted by three trefoil
quadrilobes.

The shell of the adjoining building is flanked at its angle by a turret,
which is chiefly remarkable for its spiral stairway and well. The great
poet who invented Gothic cathedrals would, in the presence of this
architectural caprice, ask the question, "Does the tower contain the
well, or the well the tower?" You can decide; you who know everything,
and more besides--except, however, Mlle. de Chateaudun's place of
concealment.

Another curiosity of the old building is a moucharaby, a kind of balcony
open at the bottom, picturesquely perched above a door, from which the
good fathers could throw stones, beams and boiling oil on the heads of
those tempted to assault the monastery for a taste of their good fare
and a draught of their good wine.

Here I live alone, or in the company of four or five choice books, in a
lofty hall with pointed roof; the points where the ribs intersect being
covered with rosework of exquisite delicacy. This comprises my suite of
apartments, for I never could understand why the little space that is
given one in this world to dream, to sleep, to live, to die i