[180] This verandah or hood has disappeared. It is shown on a model of the hospital to be seen in the musée.
[CHAPTER XVII]
Leaving my wife to run the gauntlet of the gamins of Beaune, while she sketched the starry hood and the porch of Notre Dame, we fared forth on our bicycles, towards the ancient village of Bouilland, fifteen kilometres away, to which I received my first call when I happened upon the legend of its Abbey.
Bouilland lies beyond Savigny, in the heart of the valley of the Bouxaise, a tributary of the Saône, by a road so lonely that, between Savigny and our destination we met only one individual—and he was sitting in a cart, so fast asleep that, though we longed to do so, we had not the heart to wake him.
Saint Marguerite lies high up in a hollow of the rocky hills, on the edge of the Forêt au Maitre—one of the most deserted spots in all Christendom. What was once a glorious building, with a Romanesque nave and a lovely, late thirteenth-century transept and apse, lightened with carved foliage, capitals, and graceful, slender shafts, is now a roofless ruin. Wild fruit trees grow in the transepts; the floor of the nave is paved with a litter of mossy stones, beneath which the ivy and the brambles take root; cowslips and purple violets jewel the apse with delights beyond the art of even Gothic sculptors; through the roofless arches you look up at the whispering forest-pines. Westward of the Abbey, beside the deserted adjunct buildings, is a grassy terrace, stone-walled, shaded by blossoming fruit trees. From this fresh, green garden you can look, beyond the darkness of the ancient gateway, into the flaming yellow of a field of "Mustard," the symbol of a living world beyond. Sit beside me on the old stone wall, and hear the legend of Saint Marguerite.
In days of yore, there lived in the Castle of Vergy, a maiden, beautiful and pure as an angel; she was named Marguerite.
Many young suitors of noble birth desired her hand: one, in particular, was more handsome than all the others; but his conversation was unchaste, and treachery lurked in his glance and in his smile.