'We walked to a small convent of the Fathers of the Oratory. In the reading-desk of the refectory lay the lives of the Saints.
'Oct. 11. Wednesday. We went to see Hotel de Chatlois[1156], a house not very large, but very elegant. One of the rooms was gilt to a degree that I never saw before. The upper part for servants and their masters was pretty.
'Thence we went to Mr. Monville's, a house divided into small apartments, furnished with effeminate and minute elegance.—Porphyry.
'Thence we went to St. Roque's church, which is very large;—the lower part of the pillars incrusted with marble.—Three chapels behind the high altar;—the last a mass of low arches.—Altars, I believe, all round.
'We passed through Place de Vendôme, a fine square, about as big as Hanover-square.—Inhabited by the high families.—Lewis XIV. on horse-back in the middle.
'Monville is the son of a farmer-general. In the house of Chatlois is a room furnished with japan, fitted up in Europe.
'We dined with Boccage[1157], the Marquis Blanchetti, and his lady.—The sweetmeats taken by the Marchioness Blanchetti, after observing that they were dear.—Mr. Le Roy, Count Manucci, the Abbé, the Prior[1158], and Father Wilson, who staid with me, till I took him home in the coach.
'Bathiani is gone.
'The French have no laws for the maintenance of their poor.—Monk not necessarily a priest.—Benedictines rise at four; are at church an hour and half; at church again half an hour before, half an hour after, dinner; and again from half an hour after seven to eight. They may sleep eight hours.—Bodily labour wanted in monasteries.
'The poor taken to hospitals, and miserably kept.—Monks in the convent fifteen:—accounted poor.