The shell of the adjoining building is flanked at its angle by a turret,
which is chiefly remarkable for its spiral stairway and well. The great
poet who invented Gothic cathedrals would, in the presence of this
architectural caprice, ask the question, "Does the tower contain the
well, or the well the tower?" You can decide; you who know everything,
and more besides--except, however, Mlle. de Chateaudun's place of
concealment.

Another curiosity of the old building is a moucharaby, a kind of balcony
open at the bottom, picturesquely perched above a door, from which the
good fathers could throw stones, beams and boiling oil on the heads of
those tempted to assault the monastery for a taste of their good fare
and a draught of their good wine.

Here I live alone, or in the company of four or five choice books, in a
lofty hall with pointed roof; the points where the ribs intersect being
covered with rosework of exquisite delicacy. This comprises my suite of
apartments, for I never could understand why the little space that is
given one in this world to dream, to sleep, to live, to die in, should
be divided into a set of compartments like a dressing-case. I detest
hedges, partitions and walls like a phalansterian.

To keep off dampness I have had the sides of the market-house, as my
mother calls it, wainscoted in oak to the height of twelve or fifteen
feet.

By a kind of gallery with two stairways, I can reach the windows and
enjoy the beauty of the landscape, which is lovely. My bed is a simple
hammock of aloes-fibre, slung in a corner; very low divans, and huge