We could catch only a glimpse of the knights' hall, which has been converted into a loom-room and is for this reason barred to the public.

We saw only four rows of columns supporting a ceiling ornamented with salient mouldings; they were decorated with clover leaves.

The monastery is built over this hall, at an altitude of two hundred feet above the sea level.

It is composed of a quadrangular gallery formed by a triple line of small granite, tufa, or stucco columns.

Acanthus, thistles, ivy, and oak-leaves wind around their caps; between each mitred ogive is a cut-out rose; this gallery is the place where the prisoners take the air.
The cap of the _garde-chiourme_ now passes along these walls where, in olden times, passed the shaved heads of industrious friars; and the wooden shoes of the prisoners click on the slabs that used to be swept by the trailing robes of monks and trodden by their heavy leather sandals.
The church has a Gothic choir and a Romance nave, and the two architectures seem to vie with each other in majesty and elegance.