It was early in the last century that the pretensions of the inscription received their death-blow by the discovery of a hitherto unnoticed dedication on the pediment of the porch. The reliability of this find seemed to be confirmed by an ancient charter which attributed the erection of the building to the Abbé Rambert, and its consecration too, some three years later. This date obtained right up to the end of the last century, when expert opinion demonstrated, by external and internal evidences, that although standing on the site of a much older chapel, the present one was not erected until late in the twelfth or early in the thirteenth century. This little chapel stands about three hundred yards away from the main buildings of the Abbey. The hard rock all around it is carved out into long shallow graves, which, with the exception of one, on the sloping ground near to the larger church of the Abbey, have been opened--that is to say, the heavy slabs of stone that formerly covered them have been removed and the bodies have disappeared. This pillage and desecration of the last resting-places of the brothers of the Monastery was the work of the revolutionary mobs from Arles, who, not content with rich plunder obtained in the Monastery itself, sought for any jewels buried with the dead. The Chapel of the “Holy Cross” was the mortuary chapel to this cemetery in the rocks, and the sacredness of the spot made such wide appeals to the religious superstitions of the age that many distinguished knights and nobles sought the honour of resting their bones in the enduring tombs cut in the hallowed rocks of Montmajour. The chapel is built in the shape of a cross with equal arms, the ends apsidal, buttressed, and half-vaulted. The square central tower is surmounted by a tiny cupola immediately above a small bell-lantern tower. The chapel has but three small windows, intended more to allow the light that was always kept burning inside the chapel to shed its rays upon the graveyard outside than to light the interior. There are differences of opinion as to the original object of the chapel, but it seems more than probable that the lantern in the roof was designed to contain the beacon which it was the custom in the Middle Ages to keep burning at night in memory of the dead. There is no sculptured ornament in the interior of the chapel. The walls are severely plain, but they doubtless were at one time covered with Byzantine frescoes, in harmony with the general architectural style of this building which stands in isolated dignity upon the rock above the meres. [Illustration: MONTMAJOUR.]