when Abelard sang love-songs to Heloise in Canon Fulbert's house in
the Rue des Chantres, beside the cloister of Notre Dame in Paris.
The Abbe Suger, the Abbe Bernard, and the Abbe Abelard are the three
interesting men of the French Transition.

The promenoir, then, shall pass for the year 1115, and, as such, is
an exceedingly beautiful hall, uniting the splendid calm and
seriousness of the Romanesque with the exquisite lines of the
Gothic. You will hardly see its equal in the twelfth century. At
Angers the great hall of the Bishop's Palace survives to give a
point of comparison, but commonly the halls of that date were not
vaulted; they had timber roofs, and have perished. The promenoir is
about sixty feet long, and divided into two aisles, ten feet wide,
by a row of columns. If it were used on great occasions as a
refectory, eighty or a hundred persons could have been seated at
table, and perhaps this may have been about the scale of the Abbey's
needs, at that time. Whatever effort of fancy was needed to place
Duke William and Harold in the old refectory of 1058, none whatever
is required in order to see his successors in the halls of Roger II.
With one exception they were not interesting persons. The exception
was Henry II of England and Anjou, and his wife Eleanor of Guienne,
who was for a while Regent of Normandy. One of their children was
born at Domfront, just beyond Avranches, and the Abbot was asked to
be godfather. In 1158, just one hundred years after Duke William's
visit, King Henry and his whole suite came to the Abbey, heard mass,
and dined in the refectory. "Rex venit ad Montem Sancti Michaelis,
audita missa ad magis altare, comedit in Refec-torio cum baronibus
suis." Abbot Robert of Torigny was his host, and very possibly
William of Saint-Pair looked on. Perhaps he recited parts of his
"Roman" before the King. One may be quite sure that when Queen