296 'GOD'S PEACE'
the old town's life and events are recorded. I will scarcely find any use for these studies, but through loosing myself in these far-away events I seem to absorb the atmosphere of gentle aloofness, with which I am anxious to fill my book.
It is not only for the old folios' sake I go to the library. The place itself fascinates me. It often happens that I quite forget the book lying open in front of me, to lean back in the broad armchair covered with worn pigskin, and lose myself in dreams. The library is arranged in an old monas- tery, where, during the Catholic times, the monks lived, and where during the iirst centuries after the Reformation the Latin school was held. The room in which I sit was the refectory, a fairly large room with white plaster walls, and a three-arched ceiling. On the one long side is the doorway, so low that a man must stoop to enter. It opens into the library rooms, their shelves filled with faded blue and yellow bindings. On the other long side are the three windows, one in each arch, windows buried in carving and with tiny, mulHoned panes through which the sun shines green and smoke-coloured. The windows reach almost to the ground, and look out on the garden ; a comer of the old monastery's orchard and graveyard. It is fertile ground with abundant shrubberies and glowing splendour of flowers with their rich, shining leaves. Amongst a cluster of heavily laden fruit-trees stands a tall, flat, weather-beaten gravestone with half- obliterated inscription. My eyes rest on the tall.
