Upon the fair fame of the later history of the order there rests one indelible stain. Citeaux was largely responsible for that series of awful crimes and massacres known as the Albigensian crusade. Early in the thirteenth century, Innocent III., weary of vain attempts by spiritual force to crush out heresy from the church, decided to employ the not unwilling Cistercians to preach a new crusade. A great army of "Crusaders," under the command of Eudes III., Duke of Burgundy, crossed the Rhône at Avignon, and passing through Montpellier, came to Béziers, where they proceeded to indulge in "the greatest massacre ever committed in all the world; for they spared neither young nor old, nor even infants at the breast." It seems a cruel irony that from Arnaud, Abbot of Citeaux, a successor of St. Robert and St. Bernard, should have come the answer to the question how they were to deal with the heretics: "Kill them all; God will know His Own!" * * * * * But happier recollections than those were in my mind when last I rode to Citeaux from Dijon, on a dull and rainy morning of October, a fitting day on which to visit that savage and lonely site. There are people--cultured people, even, such as Emile Montégut--who will tell you that, because the country here is flat, and the old monastery almost entirely destroyed, Citeaux is not worthy of a visit. I find it hard to understand how anyone possessing a spark of historic imagination, can thus deprive himself of the pleasure of seeing the abbey; though there were certainly less inducement to go there when the place was a penitentiary school, than now, when it is again in the occupation of the white monks. I hope that this account of my own pilgrimage there will induce others to follow my example. I rode to Citeaux by way of Rouvres, a lonely village on the plain south of Dijon. It has, or had, a château--not now visible within its belt of trees--that has some interesting historical associations, and there is a Romanesque church accessible, I remember, by a somewhat unique bridge, consisting of gravestones, evidently taken from the churchyard, laid, with the inscriptions uppermost, across the stream where the ducks paddle.