at last rebelled. I said to myself, 'It is not forbidden to
look.' And again the sails, the seas, the towers, the mountains, were as
voices whispering to me, 'Why will you never know us, draw near to us?
Why will you never understand our meaning? Why will you be ignorant for
ever of all that has been created for man to know?' Then the pain within
me became almost unbearable. At night I could not sleep. In the chapel
it was difficult to pray. I looked at the monks around me, to most of
whom I had never addressed a word, and I thought, 'Do they, too, hold
such longings within them? Are they, too, shaken with a desire of
knowledge?' It seemed to me that, instead of a place of peace, the
monastery was, must be, a place of tumult, of the silent tumult that has
its home in the souls of men. But then I remembered for how long I had
been at peace. Perhaps all the silent men by whom I was surrounded were
still at peace, as I had been, as I might be again.

"A young monk died in the monastery and was buried in the cemetery. I
made his grave against the outer wall, beneath a cypress tree. Some days
afterwards, when I was sitting on the bench by the house of the doves,
I heard a sound, which came from beyond the wall. It was like sobbing.
I listened, and heard it more distinctly, and knew that it was someone
crying and sobbing desperately, and near at hand. But now it seemed
to me to come from the wall itself. I got up and listened. Someone was
crying bitterly behind, or above, the wall, just where the young
monk had been buried. Who could it be? I stood listening, wondering,
hesitating what to do. There was something in this sound of lamentation
that moved one to the depths. For years I had not looked on a woman, or
heard a woman's voice--but I knew that this was a woman mourning.
Why was she there? What could she want? I glanced up. All round the
cemetery, as I have said, grew cypress trees. As I glanced up I saw one
shake just above where the new grave was, and a woman's voice said, 'I
cannot see it, I cannot see it!'

"I do not know why, but I felt that someone was there who wished to see
the young monk's grave. For a moment I stood there. Then I went to
the house where I kept my tools for my work in the cemetery, and got
a shears which I used for lopping the cypress trees. I took a ladder
quickly, set it against the wall, mounted it, and from the cypress I
had seen moving I lopped some of the boughs. The sobbing ceased. As
t