ave been suffered to go to ruin.

M. De la Rue rejects, as unfounded, the statement of the Bishop of
Avranches, which has obtained general credence, that the spires of the
western towers of the abbey were destroyed in 1360, by Charles the Bad,
on account of their use for the detecting of the approach of an enemy.
His principal argument against the fact is, that the King of Navarre was
at that very time at peace with France; and therefore, supposing it to
be certain that they were taken down by that prince, he is of opinion,
that their demolition must have been ordered to prevent them from
serving as landmarks to the English. At the same time, he is evidently
inclined to think that the towers were never surmounted by spires at
all; and he observes, with much apparent justice, that, if there really
were any, and if they were really destroyed at the period alledged, the
towers must have been left for a long time in a ruined state, as their
present termination is known to be the work of the eighteenth century.

The original charters and title-deeds of the abbey of the Trinity were
lost during the revolution. They perished in consequence of the extreme
care of the last abbess, who, full of anxiety for their preservation,
secured them in trunks, and hid them in the ceiling of the church. But,
in those disastrous times, the lead that covered the churches was among
the earliest objects of plunder; and the consequence was, that the roof
was stripped; the boxes exposed to the rain; the wood and paper wholly
destroyed; and the tin cases that held the charters so eaten by rust,
that their contents were rendered illegible. It was in this state that
they were found by the Abbe De la Rue, who was in possession of the
secret, and who, on his return to France, after the cessation of the
troubles and the death of the abbess, obtained permission from the
prefect for the search to be made.

The church of the abbey of the Trinity had its own peculiar rites; and,
till the period of the revolution, the community were in the habit of
printing their liturgy annually in latin. A very beautiful quarto
volume, containing the ritual, was published at Caen, in 1622, by the
order of Laurence de Budos, then abbess. It was probably from pride at a
privilege of this nature, and from a confidence in their strength, that
the nuns persisted in celebrating the ridiculous, or, it might almost be
called, blasphemous _Fete des Fous_, for a hundred years after