remnant of red paint, and opening on the bank, serves me as a private
entrance. A ferry worked by a rope and pulley establishes communication
with an island opposite the abbey, which is verdant with a mass of
osiers, elder bushes and willows. It is here also that my fleet of boats
is moored.

Seen from without, nothing would indicate a human habitation; the ruins
lie in all the splendor of their downfall.

I have not replaced one stone--walled up one lizard--the house-leek, St.
John's-wort, bell-flower, sea-green saxifrage, woody nightshade and blue
popion flower have engaged in a struggle upon the walls of arabesques,
and carvings which would discourage the most patient ornamental
sculptor. But above all, a marvel of nature attracts your admiring gaze:
it is a gigantic ivy, dating back at least to Richard Coeur de Lion, it
defies by the intricacy of its windings those geneological trees of
Jesus Christ, which are seen in Spanish churches; the top touching the
clouds, and its bearded roots embedded in the bosom of the patriarchal
Abraham; there are tufts, garlands, clusters, cascades of a green so
lustrous, so metallic, so sombre and yet so brilliant, that it seems as
if the whole body of the old building, the whole life of the dead abbey
had passed into the veins of this parasitic friend, which smothers with
its embrace, holding in place one stone, while it dislodges two to plant
its climbing spurs.

You cannot imagine what tufted elegance, what richness of open-work
tracery this encroachment of the ivy throws upon the rather gaunt and
sharp gable-end of the building, which on this front has for ornament
but four narrow-pointed windows, surmounted by three trefoil
quadrilobes.