pleasing. Soften the terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns
here, but a little, and 'tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large
space of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy: behind it,
through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure hall, which
looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish council. The large
cloister surrounds their burying-ground. The cloisters are very narrow
and very long, and let into the cells, which are built like little huts
detached from each other. We were carried into one, where lived a
middle-aged man not long initiated into the order. He was extremely
civil, and called himself Dom Victor. We have promised to visit him
often. Their habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely
clean in his person; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and
cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree. He has four
little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung with good
prints. One of them is a library, and another a gallery. He has several
canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner in breeding-cages. In his
garden was a bed of good tulips in bloom, flowers and fruit-trees, and
all neatly kept. They are permitted at certain hours to talk to
strangers, but never to one another, or to go out of their convent. But
what we chiefly went to see was the small cloister, with the history of
St. Bruno, their founder, painted by Le Soeur. It consists of twenty-two
pictures, the figures a good deal less than life. But sure they are
amazing! I don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures
excel all I have seen in Paris and England. The figure of the dead man
who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest ideas,
of ghastliness, hypocrisy discovered, and the height of damnation, pain
and cursing. A Benedictine monk, who was there at the same time, said to
me of this picture: _C'est une fable, mais on la croyoit autrefois._
Another, who showed me relics in one of their churches, expressed as
much ridicule for them. The pictures I have been speaking of are ill