d--Infuriated mob--Fictitious
treasures--Fiendish act--Massacre--Ruined monastery--Blood-red
sunset--Superstition--End of 1835.

Once within the gateway we were in a dream-world; a world of the past; a
world of ruins, but ruins rich and rare.

From the outer gateway a long avenue of trees and buildings led to the
monastery. Far down you looked upon a second gateway with a wonderful
view of receding arches and outlines. Between the two gateways on the
left were the workshops of the artisans of the days gone by, now closed
and desolate. Just before reaching the second gateway, on the right, we
found the small fifteenth-century chapel of St. George, with the
original stone altar and groined and vaulted roof. On the left within
the gateway was an ancient hospital and chapel, both crumbling into
picturesque decay: and on higher ground, the palace of the bishops,
where they lived and ruled in the days of their glory.

Exquisite outlines of crumbling archways and Gothic windows surrounded
us. Over all was a wonderful tone of age, soft and mellow. Towers and
steeples rose in clear outlines against the sky, outlines still perfect
and substantial. But the outer buildings, which had been palatial
dwellings, were mere empty shells overgrown with weeds, given over to
the bats and the owls. A wonderful bit of moulding or fragment of an
archway, Roman or Gothic as might happen, showed the beauty and
magnificence of what had once been, and would still exist but for the
barbarities of man. Some of the outer walls might have defied a
millennium of years. It was a dead world of surpassing beauty and
refinement: a series of crumbling arches and moss-grown fragments of
gigantic walls. We had it all to ourselves; the perfect repose was
unbroken; no restless forms and loud voices intruded; no jarring element
broke the spell of the centuries. We were in the very atmosphere of the
Middle Ages. In days gone by the monastery must have been of regal
splendour, as it was unlimited in power.

At last we reached the convent doorway and a bell went echoing through
the silence. No one responded, and we began to fear that perhaps the
custodian had gone off like our night porter in Lerida, taking the keys
with him. A second summons produced echoing footsteps, and the door was
opened by a comfortable looking woman, who was neither a ruin nor a
fragment nor specially antique.

"Excuse me for keeping you waiting," she said. "I am not the gu