d streams well distributed
and well kept.

"Every morning you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs
issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an
immense expanse of land. Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb
horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows,
or the orchards. Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of
women and herds are employed to look after these estates.

"The aspect of Fontevrault gives an exact idea of the ancient homes of
the Patriarchs, in their remote periods of early civilisation, which saw
the great proprietors delighting in their natal hearth, and finding their
glory, as well as their happiness, in fertilising or assisting nature.

"The abbess rules like a sovereign over her companion nuns, and over the
monks, her neighbours. She appoints their officers and their temporal
prince. It is she who admits postulants, who fixes the dates of
ordinations, pronounces interdictions, graces, and penances. They render
her an account of their administration and the employment of their
revenues, from which she subtracts carefully her third share, as the
essential right of her crosier of authority."

"Have you invited the Benedictine Fathers to your fete in the wood?" the
King asked me, smiling.

"We had no power, Sire," I answered. "There are many young ladies being
educated with the nuns of Fontevrault. The parents of these young ladies
respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the
innovation. The Fathers never go in there. They are to be seen at the
abbey church, where they sing and say their offices. Only the three
secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the
youngest of the three cannot be less than fifty.

"The night of the feast the monks draw near our cloister by means of a
wooden theatre, which forms a terrace, and from this elevation they
participate by the eye and ear in our amusements; that is enough."

"Has Madame de Mortemart ever related to you the origin of her abbey?"
resumed the King. "Perhaps she is ignorant of it. I am going to tell
you of it, for it is extremely curious; it is not as it is related in the
books, and I take the facts from good authority. You must hear of it,
and you will see.

"There was once a Comtesse de Poitiers, named Honorinde, to whom fate had
given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world. This man would