same time, the spires, which shoot up into the air, and the fine cupolas, covered with burnished tiles, gave clear indications of the character of the building. You arrive at the principal chapel by a vast flagged court, which is always crowded with sight-seers, visitors, the faithful, and the poor. Opposite the first court is an inclosure reserved for the monks. The immense cloisters, ornamented with basins inlaid with white jasper, gardens, a rich library, new dormitories, three hundred cells, a refectory, in which three hundred persons can sit down to dinner, combine to form a spectacle at once imposing and magnificent, which surpasses even the expectation of the visitor who enters the convent after having admired its exterior.
All my leisure hours, on Sundays especially, I loved to bury myself in the huge dusty library, and to ransack archives of which even the monks themselves were quite ignorant. Two books, above all, captivated me completely; one was a volume of legendary stories, the other a collection of autos de fé, executed by the Mexican Inquisition. I forgot even the lapse of time while reading them. These atrocious recitals, which the cold-blooded chronicler always sums up with Laus Deo, exercised upon me, especially when the day was waning, a singular fascination. The distant droning of the organ, and the doleful chanting of the monks, sometimes deepened the impression; and, in the mysterious gloom which had already enveloped the hall, I fancied I saw rise before me the heroes of the legendary stories, or the victims of the Inquisition. When I came out of the library, and walked in the cloisters, the monks whom I met in the dark corridors seemed to me to bear no resemblance whatever to those I had seen upholding the dignity of the cowl
