CHAPTER V. SAINT-SAVIN.
I.
Upon a hill, at the end of a road, are the remains of the abbey of Saint-Savin. The old church was, they say, built by Charlemagne; the stones, eaten and burned, are crumbling, the disjointed flags are incrusted with moss; from the garden the eye takes in the valley, brown in the evening light; the winding Gave already lifts into the air its trail of pale smoke.
It was sweet here to be a monk; it is in such places that the Imitation should be read; in such places was it written. For a sensitive and noble nature, a convent was then the sole refuge; all around wounded and repelled it.
Around what a horrible world! Brigand lords who plunder travellers and butcher each other; artisans and soldiers who stuff themselves with meat and yoke themselves together like brutes; peasants whose huts they burn, whose wives they violate, who out of despair and hunger slip away to tumult.
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No remembrance of good, nor hope of better. How sweet it is to renounce action, company, speech, to hide one’s self, forget outside things, and to listen, in security and solitude, to the divine voices that, like collected springs, murmur peacefully in the depths of the heart!