renflot was situated near
the Porte St. Antoine. This was at that time a very favorite quarter,
for the king frequently visited the Chateau of Vincennes, and different
noblemen had built charming residences in its neighborhood.

The priory was built on four sides of an immense court, planted with
trees; it had a kitchen-garden behind, and a number of out-houses, which
made it look like a small village. Two hundred monks occupied the
dormitories situated at the end of the courtyard, while in the front,
four large windows, with a balcony before them, gave to these apartments
air and light.

It was maintained on its own resources and dependencies; its pasture
land fed a troop of fifty oxen and ninety-nine sheep, for by some
traditional law, no religious order was allowed to possess one hundred
of anything, while certain outbuildings sheltered ninety-nine pigs of a
particular breed, which were most carefully reared and fattened. The
espaliers of the priory, which were exposed to the mid-day sun,
furnished peaches, apricots, and grapes, while preserves of these fruits
were skillfully made by a certain Brother Eusebius, who was the
architect of the famous rock constructed of sweetmeats which had been
presented to the two queens by the Hotel de Ville of Paris at the last
state banquet which had taken place there.

In the interior of this paradise for gourmands and sluggards, in a
sumptuous apartment, we shall find Gorenflot, ornamented with an
additional chin, and characterized by that sort of venerable gravity
which the constant habit of repose and good living gives to the most
vulgar faces. Half-past seven in the morning had just struck. The prior
had profited by the rule which gave to him an hour's more sleep than to
the other monks, and now, although he had risen, he was quietly
continuing his sleep in a large armchair as soft as eider down. The
furniture of the room was more mundane than religious; a carved table,
covered with a rich cloth, books of religious gallantry--that singular
mixture of love and devotion, which we only meet with at that epoch of
art--expensive vases, and curtains of rich damask, were some of the
luxuries of which Dom Modeste Gorenflot had become possessed by the
grace of God, of the king, and of Chicot.

Gorenflot slept, as we have said, in his chair, when the door opened
softly, and two men entered. The first was about thirty-five years of
age, thin and pale, and with a look which commanded,