but the first great royal residence to be compared with the Merveille is Amboise, dating from about 1500, three centuries later.  Civilization made almost a clean sweep of art.  Only here, at Mont-Saint-Michel, one may still sit at ease on the stone benches in; the embrasures of the refectory windows, looking over the thirteenth-century ocean and watching the architect as he worked out the details which were to produce or accent his contrasts or harmonies, heighten his effects, or hide his show of effort, and all by means so true, simpler and apparently easy that one seems almost competent to follow him.  One learns better in time.  One gets to feel that these things were due in part to an instinct that the architect himself might not have been able to explain.  The instinct vanishes as time creeps on.  The halls at Rouen or at Blois are more easily understood; the Salle des Caryatides of Pierre Lescot at the Louvre, charming as it is, is simpler still; and one feels entirely at home in the Salle des Glaces which filled the ambition of Louis XIV at Versailles.

If any lingering doubt remains in regard to the professional cleverness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, we had best return to the great hall, and pass through a low door in its extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some thirteen feet square, beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by a large stone fireplace, and in the corner, a spiral staircase leading up to another square room above opening directly into the cloister.  It is a little library or charter-house.  The arrangement is almost too clever for gravity, as is the case with more than one arrangement in the Merveille.  From the outside one can see that at this corner the architect had to provide a heavy buttress against a double strain, and he built up from the rock below a square corner tower as support, into which he worked a spiral staircase leading from the cellar up to the cloisters.  Just above the level of the great hall he managed to construct this little room, a gem.  The place was near and far; it was quiet and central; William of Saint-Pair, had he been still alive, might have written his “Roman” there; monks might have illuminated missals there.  A few steps upward brought them to the cloisters for meditation; a few more brought them to the church for prayer.  A few steps downward brought them to the great hall, for business, a few steps more led them into the refectory, for dinner.  To contemplate the goodness of God was a simple joy when one had such a room to work in; such a spot as the great hall to walk in, when the storms blew; or the cloisters in which to meditate, when the sun shone; such a dining-room as the refectory; and such a view from one’s windows over the infinite ocean and the guiles of Satan’s quicksands.  From the battlements of Heaven, William of Saint-Pair looked down on it with envy.