to an
eagle's nest than the home of any lord of Laigle who dwelled at Laigle.
The exact ground-plan Mr. Clark, and few besides Mr. Clark, could make
out. But without making out the exact ground-plan, we learn enough to
teach us not a little about both Roger's Beaumont and Beaumont's Roger.

Was the lord of Beaumont-le-Roger entitled to a _sainte chapelle_ in his
castle? Perhaps he might seem to be so when he was also Count of Meulan
and Earl of Leicester. Perhaps it might seem so still more when
Beaumont had come into the hands of French kings, and had begun to be
granted out as a _comte-pairie_ for their sons. But, seemingly before
that time, which did not come till the fourteenth century, a building
arose which is not exactly a _sainte chapelle_ within the castle, but
which is very near to the castle, and which has very much the air of a
_sainte chapelle_. When we speak of a _sainte chapelle_ we, of course,
mean a _sainte chapelle_ anywhere, whether at Riom, Paris, or anywhere
else. This building is the abbey church of Beaumont, which stands just
below the castle on the hill-side, a building once evidently of
remarkable beauty. Perhaps the most notable feature about it is the
ascent from the road below to the abbey buildings, a covered passage
lighted by large early Geometrical windows. We make our way up and
presently reach the abbey itself. It is plain that on this narrow ledge
on the hill-side it was no more possible than it was on the steep of
Saint Michael's Mount to put the several buildings of the monastery in
their accustomed relation to the church and to one another. Too much has
perished for any one but a specialist in monastic arrangements to
attempt to spell out the buildings of the monastery in detail; but it
seems that a good deal lay to the westward of the church which in
ordinary cases would have been placed to the north or south. The church
is but a fragment; the north and east walls are there, and from them we
can reconstruct it. "East Wall" is here a phrase that may be used; for
we are a little amazed to find that the church had no apse, but an
English-looking flat end. The large east window has lost its tracery,
which should have been something of the pattern of the Angels' Choir at
Lincoln. The whole of the work that remains is of the best French Early
Gothic. Seen from below, from the bridge across the Rille at no great
distance, there is something wonderfully striking in this single side of
the