t the one and Arnulf at the other; but we still do not know what traces
either sister or brother may have left. At last we reach Almeneches,
Abbess Almeneches, and we see the church described in our Joanne. It is
not very tempting in its general look, and there is nothing particular
about its site, except that the ground does slope away from its
east-end. Is this Emma's minster or its successor, or is it merely a
parish church, and have we to look for the abbey elsewhere? Some signs
of the cloister roof on the south side soon settle this question. But we
begin to hope, for the credit of the house of Montgomery, that Emma,
either before or after her troubles, and her niece after her, had a
better church than this to preside over. We find from Joanne that
Almeneches boasts of its church; but it doth falsely boast. Instead of
the nave of Romsey or of Matilda's church at Caen, we have a single body
of late Gothic, with windows like very bad Perpendicular, a form not
uncommon hereabouts. We get its date from an inscription:--

"Ce temple lequel a este ruine par l'antiquite fut commence a
reedifier l'a^n de grace 1534 et fut perfaict l'a^n 1550 par
revere^nde dame Madame Loyse de Silly abbesse de cea^ns. Gloire et
hon^r. soyt au seigneur."

Louise of Silly's work may be just endured; it is at any rate better
than the choir built by a later Abbess Louise--we have got out of the
age of Emmas and Matildas--in 1674. That is the lowest depth of all; it
is the depth reached by the choir of Saint Wulfram of Abbeville; that
is, it is of no style at all; a decent Italian building would be welcome
by the side of it. But its modern adornments may teach us the history of
Saint Opportuna down to our own day. That may be said, because it
represents her translation in the days of the second Republic in 1849.
What most strikes one is the appearance in stained glass of modern
uniforms and--we were going to say modern bonnets, only we are told that
the bonnets of 1849 are not counted as modern in 1891. Still we are sure
that neither Abbess Emma nor even Abbess Louise ever wore such before
they entered religion. Altogether one never saw so poor an abbey church
anywhere. One is curious to know what it immediately supplanted, and
whether the sisterhood was again in such straits as those which it had
been in the time of Emma of Montgomery. Did the house never recover
from the seizure of its lands by King Henry?

Of the "Manoi