The chronicle of this old Provencal house has been written, in a style
somewhat unctuous and flowery, by M. Jules Canonge. I purchased the little
book--a modest pamphlet--at the establishment of the good sisters, just
beside the church, in one of the highest part of Les Baux. The sisters
have a school for the hardy little Baussenques, whom I heard piping their
lessons, while I waited in the cold parlor for one of the ladies to come
and speak to me. Nothing could have been more perfect than the manner of
this excellent woman when she arrived; yet her small religious house
seemed a very out-of-the-way corner of the world. It was spotlessly neat,
and the rooms looked as if they had lately been papered and painted; in
this respect, at the medieval Pompeii, they were rather a discord. They
were, at any rate, the newest, freshest thing at Les Baux.
I remember going round to the church, after I had left the good sisters,
and to a little quiet terrace, which stands in front of it, ornamented
with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast-high, over which
you look down steep hillsides, off into the air and all about the
neighboring country.
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