parloirn.

1728 E. Chambers Cycl. Parloir, Parlour, in Nunneries, a little Room, or Closet, where People talk to the Nuns, thro' a Kind of grated Window... Antiently, there were also Parlours in the Convents of Monks, where the Novices used to converse together, at the Hours of Recreation.

1862 G. A. Sala Seven Sons Mammon II. viii. 206 The parloir was a bare whitewashed room, with no other decorations than a framed list of the rules of the infirmary and a plain wooden crucifix.

1924 A. D. Sedgwick Little French Girl iii. vi. 276 She might have sat, in her early convent days, giving an account of herself in the parloir..to the relative who had come to pay her a weekly visit.

1927 J. Rhys Left Bank 43 The old man and the little boy were the last of the queue of people waiting..to be admitted to the parloir—a row of little boxes where on certain days prisoners may speak to their friends through a grating.

1955 J. Thomas No Banners xxv. 248 His camp bed had been installed in the narrow, steel-barred passage dividing the two sections of the parloir or visiting cell.

1968 French Rev. Apr. 652 He prefers his cell, calm and dark, to the pathetic babel of the ‘parloir’.