Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE
was the old square cloister with covered arcade all
around it where the monks of the ancient times used
to sit and meditate, and now and then welcome to
their hospitalities the wandering knight with his tin
breeches on, and in the middle of the square court
(open to the sky) was a stone well curb, cracked and
slick with age and use, and all about it were weeds,
and among the weeds moldy brickbats that the
Crusaders used to throw at one another. A passage
at the further side of the cloister led to another
weedy and roofless little inclosure beyond where there
was a ruined wall clothed to the top with masses of
ivy, and flanking it was a battered and picturesque
arch. All over the building there were comfortable
rooms and comfortable beds and clean plank floors
with no carpets on them. In one room upstairs were
half a dozen portraits, dimming relics of the vanished
centuries-portraits of abbots who used to be as
grand as princes in their old day, and very rich, and
much worshiped and very bold; and in the next room
there were a howling chromo and an electric bell.
Downstairs there was an ancient wood carving with a
Latin word commanding silence, and there was a
spang-new piano close by. Two elderly French
women, with the kindest and honestest and sincerest
faces, have the abbey now, and they board and
lodge people who are tired of the roar of cities and
want to be where the dead silence and serenity
and peace of this old nest will heal their blistered
spirits and patch up their ragged minds. They fed
us well, they slept us well, and I wish I could
have stayed there a few years and got a solid rest.
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