The three rooms of which it was composed were spacious, elegantly vaulted, and ventilated at the back by open rosettes, all different and very prettily designed.  These three rooms were separated from the cloister by a dark passage at the end of which was a strong door of oak.  The wall was three feet thick.  The middle room was destined for reading, prayer, and meditation; all its furniture consisted of a large chair with a praying-desk and a back, from six to eight feet high, let into and fixed in the wall.  The room to the right of this was the friar’s bed-room; at the farther end of it was situated the alcove, very low, and paved above with flags like a tomb.  The room to the left was the workshop, the refectory, the store-room of the recluse.  A press at the far end of the room had a wooden compartment with a window opening on the cloister, through which his provisions were passed in.  His kitchen consisted of two little stoves placed outside, but not, as was the strict rule, in the open air; a vault, opening on the garden, protected the culinary labours of the monk from the rain, and allowed him to give himself up to this occupation a little more than the founder would have wished.  Moreover, a fire-place introduced into this third room indicated many other relaxations, although the science of the architect had not gone so far as to make this fire-place serviceable.

Running along the back of the rooms, on a level with the rosettes, was a long channel, narrow and dark, intended for the ventilation of the cell, and above was a loft in which the maize, onions, beans, and other simple winter provisions were kept.  On the south the three rooms opened on a flower garden, exactly the size of the cell itself, which was separated from the neighbouring gardens by walls ten feet high, and was supported by a strongly-built terrace above a little orange grove which occupied this ledge of the mountain.  The lower ledge was covered with a beautiful arbour of vines, the third with almond and palm trees, and so on to the bottom of the little valley, which, as I have said, was an immense garden.

The flower garden of each cell had all along its right side a reservoir, made of freestone, from three to four feet in width and the same in depth, receiving through conduits placed in the balustrade of the terrace the waters of the mountain, and distributing them in the flower garden by means of a stone cross, which divided it into four equal squares.

As to this flower garden, planted with pomegranate, lemon, and orange trees, surrounded by raised walks made of bricks which, like the reservoir, were shaded by perfumed arbours, it was like a pretty salon of flowers and verdure, where the monk could walk dry-footed on wet days.

Even without being told, we should have known that the artists who had now become inmates of the monastery were charmed with their surroundings.  Moreover,