Seon was originally built upon an island and received its name from this circumstance, as is quaintly enough recorded in the _Introductio ad Annales Monasterii Seonentis_, of Benonne Feichtmaejr, Ejusdem Monasterii Professor—“When God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, he threatened the earth with destruction; and said unto Noah, ‘Make thee an ark,’ etc., etc., etc. So our blessed founder, _Aribo_, seeing in what unrighteousness mankind had again fallen, resolved also to build an ark, and to receive into it not only his own household, but all others who were willing to quit the wickedness of the world and save themselves from the deluge of sin. Accordingly he changed his castle called Buergel into a monastery under the seal of the holy patriarch Benedictus, and recommended the same to the protection of the holy martyr Lambertus. The monastery was then named Seon, as the letters composing this word being reversed form the name of _Noes_ (Noah); and the monastery representing the ark appeared to float in the midst of the lake, a place of refuge for all willing to seek it.” Of the original building of 994 nothing remains but the church, now converted into a cellar, and the cloisters,—the other parts having been consumed by fire in the year 1561. In the course of time, however, and even before the secularisation of the monastery, it had been found convenient to connect Seon with the mainland by means of a road, over which Hamilton must have driven the evening before. And now, when viewed from the outside, Seon much more resembled a middle-aged German castle than a monastery. This impression it made on Hamilton, too, as he watched the numerous groups of people who had begun to enliven with their presence the pretty garden extending from it to the lake.