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, where stood the portal and where stood the altar, two gigantic bays, so that, from the threshold of the edifice, the eye plunges into the forest beyond as through a deep triumphal arch.  In this solitary spot the effect is unexpected and solemn.  I was delighted with it.  “Monsieur,” I said to the miller, who, since my arrival, had been watching my every step from a distance with that fierce mistrust which is a peculiarity of this part of the country, “I have been requested to examine and to sketch these ruins.  That work will require several days; could you not spare me a daily trip from the town to the abbey and back, by furnishing me with such accommodations as you can, for a week or two?”

The miller, a thorough Norman, examined me from head to foot without answering, like a man who knows that silence is of gold; he measured me, he gauged me, he weighed me, and finally, opening his flour-coated lips, he called his wife.  The latter appeared at once upon the threshold of the chapter-hall, converted into a cow-pen, and I had to repeat my request to her.  She examined me in her turn, but not at such great length as her husband, and, with the superior scent of her sex, her conclusion was, as I had the right to expect, that of the praeses in the Malade Imaginaire:  “Dignus es intrare.”  The miller, who saw what turn things were taking, lifted his cap and treated me to a smile.  I must add that these excellent people, once the ice was broken, tried in every way to compensate me, by a thousand eager attentions, for the excessive caution of their reception.  They wished to give up to me their own room, adorned with the Adventures of Telemachus, but I preferred—­as Mentor would have done—­a cell of austere nudity, of which the window, with small, lozenge-shaped panes, opens on the ruined portal of the church and the horizon of the forest.