Of the monuments with which Richelieu would have ornamented his town there remains a curious market-hall and a church in the pure Jesuitic style of architecture, lacking nothing of pretence and grandeur.
Not much can be said for the vast Église Notre Dame de Richelieu, a heavy Italian structure, built from the plans of Lemercier. However satisfying and beautiful the style may be in Italy, it is manifestly, in all great works of church-building in the north, unsuitable and uncouth.
There was also a château as well, a great Mansart affair with an overpowering dome. Practically this remains to-day, but, like all else in the town, it is but a promise of greater things which were expected to materialize, but never did.
At the bottom of a little valley, in a fertile plain, lies Fontevrault, or what there is left of it, for the old abbey is now nothing more than a matter-of-fact "maison de détention" for criminals. The abbey of yesterday is the prison of to-day.
Fontevrault is an enigma; it is, furthermore, what the French themselves call a "triste et maussade bourg." Its former magnificent abbey was one of the few shrines of its class which was respected by the Revolution, but now it has become a prison which shelters something like a thousand unfortunates.
For centuries the old abbey had royal princesses for abbesses and was one of the most celebrated religious houses in all France. It is a sad degeneration that has befallen this famous establishment.
In the eleventh century an illustrious man of God, a Breton priest, named Robert d'Arbrissel, outlined the foundation of the abbey and gathered together a community of monks. He died in the midst of his labours, in 1117, and was succeeded by the Abbess Petronille de Chemille.
For nearly six hundred years the abbey—which comprised a convent for men and another for women—grew and prospered, directed, not infrequently, by an abbess of the blood royal. It has been claimed that, as a religious establishment for men and women, ruled over by a woman, the abbey of Fontevrault was unique in Christendom.
It is an ample structure with a church tower of bistre which forms a most pleasing note of colour in the landscape. The basilica was begun in 1101, and consecrated by Pope Calixtus II. in 1119. Its interior showed a deep vaulting, with graceful and hardy arches supported by massive columns with quaint and curiously sculptured capitals.
The twelfth-century cloister was indeed a masterwork among those examples, all too rare, existing to-day. Its arcade is severely elegant and was rebuilt by the Abbess Renée de Bourbon, sister of François I., after the best of decorative Renaissance of that day. The chapter-house, now used by the director of the prison, has in a remarkable manner retained the mural frescoes of a former day. There are depicted a series of groups of mystical and real personages in a most curious fashion. The refectory is still much in its primitive state, though put to other uses to-day. Its tribune, where the lectrice entertained the sisters during their repasts, is, however, still in its place.