The Other Room
Was A Strange, Immense Apartment, Lately Restored
With Much Splendor.
It was of great length and
height, had a painted and gilded barrel-roof, and one
end of it - the one I was introduced to - appeared
to serve as a chapel, as two white-robed sisters were
on their knees before an altar.
This was divided by
red curtains from the larger part; but the porter lifted
one of the curtains, and showed me that the rest
of it, a long, imposing vista, served as a ward, lined
with little red-draped beds. "C'est l'heure de la
lecture," remarked my guide; and a group of conva-
lescents - all the patients I saw were women - were
gathered in the centre around a nun, the points of
whose white hood nodded a little above them, and
whose gentle voice came to us faintly, with a little
echo, down the high perspective. I know not what
the good sister was reading, - a dull book, I am afraid,
- but there was so much color, and such a fine, rich
air of tradition about the whole place, that it seemed
to me I would have risked listening to her. I turned
away, however, with that sense of defeat which is
always irritating to the appreciative tourist, and pot-
tered about Beaune rather vaguely for the rest of my
hour: looked at the statue of Gaspard Monge, the
mathematician, in the little _place_ (there is no _place_ in
France too little to contain an effigy to a glorious son);
at the fine old porch - completely despoiled at the
Revolution - of the principal church; and even at the
meagre treasures of a courageous but melancholy little
museum, which has been arranged - part of it being
the gift of a local collector - in a small hotel de ville.
I carried away from Beaune the impression of some-
thing mildly autumnal, - something rusty yet kindly,
like the taste of a sweet russet pear.
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