The pious monks who caused this simple and touching inscription to be
engraven over the gate of their monastery, never supposed that one day
it would offer the most strange of _solecisms_. Enter this house and
you will have great difficulty in believing that you visit one of the
most celebrated abbeys in Rouen.
This abbey, which was founded and endowed by the pious lady Aimeline,
and enriched by the liberalities of Robert-the-Magnificent, this once
famous monastery, which was honoured by the protection of kings, is now
a confused sort of inclosure and inhabited by workmen of different
kinds. Dirty courts and buildings in ruin have been for a long time the
only remains of the interior of Saint-Amand. Some parts nevertheless
have escaped destruction. Such is a very curious building, which had
been erected about the end of the XVIth century during the life of the
abbot Thomasse Daniel. This edifice is extremely remarkable from the
sculptures which cover the whole front, and chiefly represent pointed
windows. On the first floor, we find a room with two fire places, on
one we may still distinguish in spite of mutilation, the armorial
bearings of the Daniel family. The wainscot is even more curious than
the sculptures which ornament the front of the house. At one of the
corners of this building there is a small turret, of stone, its form is
polygonal; its ornaments are rich and in very good taste: it is a fine
specimen of the productions of the _renaissance_.
The building, with a front of the Ionic order, which is separated from
the other by the turret of which we have just spoken, contains a room,
which a few years ago, excited the curiosity of connoisseurs. The fire
place was surmounted by an oaken wainscot, which represented, in niches
separated by pilasters, four figures, those of the virgin, the angel
Gabriel, Saint-Margaret and Saint-Magdalen.