AFTER VESPERS
In which, though the chapter is short, old Alinardo says very interesting things about the labyrinth and about the way to enter it.

I woke when it was almost tolling the hour for the evening meal. I felt dull and somnolent, for daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh: the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy,. sated and unsated at the same time. William was not to his cell; obviously he had risen much earlier. I found him, after a brief search, coming out of the Aedificium. He told me he had been in the scriptorium, leafing through the catalogue and observing the monks at work, while trying to approach Venantius’s desk and resume his inspection. But for one reason or another, each monk seemed bent on keeping him from searching among those papers. First Malachi had come over to him, to show him some precious illuminations. Then Benno had kept him busy on trifling pretexts. Still later, when he had bent over to resume his examination, Berengar had begun hovering around him, offering his collabora?tion.
Finally, seeing that my master appeared seriously determined to look into Venantius’s things, Malachi told him outright that, before rummaging among the dead man’s papers, he ought perhaps to obtain the abbot’s authorization; that he himself, even though he was the librarian, had refrained, out of respect and discipline, from looking; and that in any case, as William had requested, no one had approached that desk, and no one would approach it until the abbot gave instructions. William realized it was not worth engaging in a test of strength with Malachi, though all that stir and those fears about Venantius’s papers had of course increased his desire to become acquainted with them. But he was so determined to get back in there that night, though he still did not know how, that he decided not to create incidents. He was harboring, however, thoughts of retaliation, which, if they had not been inspired as they were by a thirst for truth, would have seemed very stubborn and perhaps reprehensible.
Before entering the refectory, we took another little walk in the cloister, to dispel the mists of sleep in the cold evening air. Some monks were still walking there in meditation. In the garden opening off the cloister we glimpsed old Alinardo of Grottaferrata, who, by now feeble of body, spent a great part of his day among the trees, when he was not in church praying; He seemed not to feel the cold, and he was sitting in the outer porch.
William spoke a few words of greeting to him, and the old man seemed happy that someone should spend time with him.
“A peaceful day,” William said.
“By the grace of God,” the old man answered.
“Peaceful in the heavens, but grim on earth. Did you know Venantius well?”
“Venantius who?” the old man said. Then a light flashed in his eyes. “Ah, the dead boy. The beast is roaming about the abbey. ...”
“What beast?”
“The great beast that comes from the sea ... Seven heads and ten horns and upon his horns ten crowns and upon his heads three names of blasphemy. The beast like unto a leopard, with the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion ... I have seen him.”
“Where have you seen him? In the library?”
“Library? Why there? I have not gone to the scrip?torium for years and I have never seen the library. No one goes to the library. I knew those who did go up to the library. ...”
“Who? Malachi? Berengar?”
“Oh, no ...” the old man said, chuckling. “Before. The librarian who came before Malachi, many years ago ...”
“Who was that?”
“I do not remember; he died when Malachi was still young. And the one who came before Malachi’s master, and was a young assistant librarian when I was young ... But I never set foot in the library. Labyrinth ...”
“The library is a labyrinth?............