A word must here be said to explain how it was that the prelate had “dropped in” at this singularly unfortunate moment, since bishops are not usually wandering about in valleys at an early hour on November mornings. It came about in this way. The old almoner of the place, alarmed and horrified at the conduct of the abbess and the irreverent and indeed ribald “goings-on” at this religious house, had hurried during the night to the bishop and had given him an insight into convent life as lived at St. Pons. He begged the bishop to do something, and this the bishop did. The arrival of the prelate at the convent gate had the effect of a sudden thunder-clap on a clear day. The abbess dropped her cup; the knights doffed their caps; the maids, peeping behind corners, fell out of sight; while the nuns stood petrified like a row of brown stones. The great cleric screamed out his condemnation of the abbess, of the nuns, of the convent and of everything that was in it. He shrieked until he became inarticulate and until his voice had sunk to a venomous whisper like the hiss of a snake. He dismissed the young gallants with a speech that would have withered a worm. Turning to the women he said even more horrid things. He expelled the abbess and the nuns from St. Pons and ordered them to repair at once to the convent of St. Pierre d’Almanarre near Hyères, a convent notable for the severity of its rules. Here, as the historian says, they would be able “to expiate their sins with austerities to which they had long been strangers.” It was in this way that the convent of St. Pons came to an end; for the desecrated building was never occupied from that day. No nun ever again paced its quiet courtyard; no pigeons came fluttering to the sister’s hand nor did the passer-by hear again the sound of women singing in the small grey chapel. In the course of centuries the building fell into ruin and, year by year, the scandalised walls crumbled away, while tender rosemary and chiding brambles crept over the place to cover its shame. On this eventful morning the bishop’s efforts did not end when he had sentenced the lady abbess and had swept the convent from the earth. He proceeded, before he left, to pronounce over the assembly the anathema of the Church. He cursed them all from the abbess standing with bowed head to the scullion gaping from the kitchen door. He cursed the nuns, the novices, the lay helpers and the maids, and had there been a jackdaw in the building, as at Rheims, he would, no doubt, have included the bird in his anathema. So wide and so comprehensive a cursing, delivered before breakfast, had never before been known. Two of the party—and two only—escaped the curse of the Church, Raimbaud de Trects and Blanche d’Entrevannes. It was not until the morning, when the whole of the company were assembled about the convent gate, that the two were missed.