Abstract
Eyeing the monks as they glided into die cloisters for vespers, their bodies concealed beneadi voluminous gowns and dieir faces nearly hidden in die tunnels of dieir pointed black hoods, Fermor thought they looked "desperately sad," dieir skin "preternaturally pale, some of them nearly green," their faces at once haggard and smooth, with never a smile or a frown crossing their lips, eyes always downcast, no emotion visible other than an occasional flash of what looked like melancholy. Surrounded by elder flower, with their bases entangled in bracken and blackberry and bridged at dieir summit with arches and broken spandrels dut fly spinning over the treetops in slender trajectories, the clustering pillars suspend the great empty circumference of a rose window in die rook-haunted sky.