Having amused myself for some time with the pictures, and the descriptions the Coadjutor gave me of them, we quitted the gallery and entered a kind of chapel, in which were two altars with lamps burning before them, on each side of a lofty portal. This opened into a grand coved hall, adorned with historical paintings of St. Bruno’s life, and the portraits of the Generals of the order, since the year of the great founder’s death (1085) to the present time. Under these portraits are the stalls for the Superiors, who assist at the grand convocation. In front appears the General’s throne; above, hangs a representation of the canonized Bruno, crowned with stars. Were I, after walking along the dim cloisters, and passing through the antechapel, faintly illuminated by a solitary lamp, suddenly to enter this hall at midnight, when the convocation is assembled, and the synod of venerable fathers, all in solemn order, surrounding the successor of Bruno, it would be a long while, I believe, before I could recover from the surprise of so august a spectacle. It must indeed be a very imposing sight: the gravity they preserve on these occasions, their venerable age (for Superiors cannot be chosen young), and the figures of their deceased Generals, dimly discovered above, may surely be allowed to awe even an heretical spectator into a momentary respect for the order. For my own part, I must confess, that the hall, though divested of all this accompaniment, filled me with a veneration I scarcely knew how to account for; perhaps the portraits inspired it. They were all well executed, and mostly in attitudes of adoration. The form of Bruno was almost lost in the splendour of the stars which hovered over him. I could in some moments fancy myself capable of plunging into the horror of a desert, and foregoing all the vanities and delights of the world, to secure my memory so sublime a consecration. The Coadjutor seemed charmed with the respect with which I looked round on these holy objects; and if the hour of vespers had not been drawing near, we should have spent more time in the contemplation of Bruno’s miracles, portrayed on the lower panels of the hall. We left that room to enter a winding passage (lighted by windows in the roof), that brought us to a cloister six hundred feet in length, from which branched off two others, joining a fourth of the same most extraordinary dimensions. Vast ranges of slender pillars extend round the different courts of the edifice, many of which are thrown into gardens belonging to particular cells.