After landing this agreeable companion at his own door, it became
necessary for me to alight also; a rocky path, or rather a rude flight of
stone steps, winding down the side of a steep declivity, led me to the
bottom of a narrow valley which spreads and stretches between a double
chain of high wooded hills. A small river flows lazily through it under
the shade of alder-bushes, dividing two strips of meadows as fine and
velvety as the lawns of a park; it is crossed over by an old bridge with a
single arch, which reflects in the placid water the outlines of its
graceful ogive. On the right, the hills stand close together in the form
of a circus, and seemed to join their verdure-clad curves; on the left,
they spread out until they become merged in the deep and somber masses of
a vast forest. The valley is thus closed on all sides, and offers a
picture of which the calm, the freshness, and the isolation penetrate the
soul.

The ruins of the abbey stand with their back against the forest. What
remains of the abbey proper is not a great deal. At the entrance of the
court-yard, a monumental gateway; a wing of the building, dating from the
twelfth century, in which dwell the family of the miller of whom I am the
guest; the chapter-hall, remarkable for some elegant arches and a few
remnants of mural painting; finally, two or three cells, one of which
seems to have been used for the purposes of correction, if I may judge
from the solidity of the door and the strength of the bolts. The rest has
been torn down, and may be found in fragments among the cottages of the
neighborhood. The church, which has almost the proportions of a cathedral,
is finely preserved, and produces a marvelous effect. The portal and the
apse have alone disappeared; the whole interior architecture, the copings,
the tall columns, are intact and as if built yesterday. There, it seems,
that an artist must have presided over the work of destruction; a masterly
stroke of the pick-ax has opened at the two extremities of the church,