The Place Looks Mean And
Flat; And As You Drive Away You Scarcely Know Whether
To Be Glad Or Sorry That All Those Bristling Horrors Have
Been Reduced To The Commonplace.
A certain flatness of impression awaits you also, I
think, at Marmoutier, which is the other indisuensable
excursion in the near neighborhood of Tours.
The
remains of this famous abbey lie on the other bank of
the stream, about a mile and a half from the town.
You follow the edge of the big brown river; of a fine
afternoon you will be glad to go further still. The
abbey has gone the way of most abbeys; but the place
is a restoration as well as a ruin, inasmuch as the
sisters of the Sacred Heart have erected a terribly
modern convent here. A large Gothic doorway, in a
high fragment of ancient wall, admits you to a garden-
like enclosure, of great extent, from which you are
further introduced into an extraordinarily tidy little
parlor, where two good nuns sit at work. One of these
came out with me, and showed me over the place, -
a very definite little woman, with pointed features, an
intensely distinct enunciation, and those pretty man-
ners which (for whatever other teachings it may be
responsible) the Catholic church so often instils into
its functionaries. I have never seen a woman who had
got her lesson better than this little trotting, murmur-
ing, edifying nun. The interest, of Marmoutier to-day
is not so much an interest of vision, so to speak, as an
interest of reflection, - that is, if you choose to reflect
(for instance) upon the wondrous legend of the seven
sleepers (you may see where they lie in a row), who
lived together - they were brothers and cousins - in
primitive piety, in the sanctuary constructed by the
blessed Saint Martin (emulous of his precursor, Saint
Gatianus), in the face of the hillside that overhung the
Loire, and who, twenty-five years after his death,
yielded up their seven souls at the same moment, and
enjoyed the curious privilege of retaining in their faces,
in spite of this process, the rosy tints of life.
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