Somewhat alarmed at this, and receiving no answer when he
knocked and called, Roland began to look more at leisure upon the
exterior of the little dwelling before he ventured to enter it. The
flowers, which had been trained with care against the walls, seemed to
have been recently torn down, and trailed their dishonoured garlands
on the earth; the latticed window was broken and dashed in. The
garden, which the monk had maintained by his constant labour in the
highest order and beauty, bore marks of having been lately trod down
and destroyed by the hoofs of animals, and the feet of men.
The sainted spring had not escaped. It was wont to rise beneath a
canopy of ribbed arches, with which the devotion of elder times had
secured and protected its healing waters. These arches were now almost
entirely demolished, and the stones of which they were built were
tumbled into the well, as if for the purpose of choking up and
destroying the fountain, which, as it had shared in other days the
honour of the saint, was, in the present, doomed to partake his
unpopularity. Part of the roof had been pulled down from the house
itself, and an attempt had been made with crows and levers upon one of
the angles, by which several large corner-stones had been forced out
of their place; but the solidity of ancient mason-work had proved too
great for the time or patience of the assailants, and they had
relinquished their task of destruction. Such dilapidated buildings,
after the lapse of years, during which nature has gradually covered
the effects of violence with creeping plants, and with weather-stains,
exhibit, amid their decay, a melancholy beauty.
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