remarkable is the extraordinary care with which the building has been
restored, and the whole interior so scraped and chiselled afresh that it
has the appearance of a building of to-day. The eastern end and the
chancel are partitioned off for the use of the nuns attached to the
Hôtel Dieu; the sister who conducts us round this part of the building
raises a curtain, softly stretched across the chancel-screen, and shews
us twenty or thirty of them at prayers.

We can see the hospital wards in the cloisters, and, if we desire it,
ascend the eastern tower, and obtain a view over a vast extent of
country, and of the town of Caen, set in the midst of gardens and green
meadows, and the river, with boats and white sails, winding far away to
the sea.

'These two royal abbeys,' writes Dawson Turner, 'which have fortunately
escaped the storm of the Revolution, are still an ornament to the town,
an honour to the sovereign who caused them to be erected, and to the
artist who produced them. Both edifices rose at the same time and from
the same motive. William the Conqueror, by his union with Matilda, had
contracted a marriage proscribed by the decrees of consanguinity. The
clergy, and especially the Archbishop of Rouen, inveighed against the
union; and the Pope issued an injunction, that the royal pair should
erect two monasteries by way of penance, one for monks, the other for
nuns; as well as that the Duke should found four hospices, each for 100
poor persons. In obedience to this command, William founded the Church
of St. Stephen, and Matilda, the Church of the Holy Trinity.

It is usual on this spot to recount the pitiful, but rather apocryphal
story of the burial of William the Conqueror, by a 'simple knight;' of
its dramatic interruption by one of the bystanders, a 'man of low