coughed up the water and could speak, they asked her, "Why, sister, didst thou act thus cruelly?" and she replied, pointing to the Prior, "My lord there threatened that I should be buried when dead in a field, wherefore I preferred to be drowned in the flood rather than to be buried like a beast in the field." Then they led her back to the monastery and guarded her more carefully. Behold what great evil is born of melancholy (_tristitia_). That woman was brought up from infancy in the monastery. She was a chaste, devout, stern and religious virgin, and, as the mistress [of the novices] of a neighbouring monastery told me, all the maidens educated by her were of better discipline and more devout than others"[928]. The other anecdote tells of an old lay brother, who at the end of a long life fell into despair: "I know not," says Caesarius, "by what judgment of God he was made thus sad and fearful, that he was so greatly afraid for his sins and despaired altogether of the life eternal. He did not indeed doubt in his faith, but rather despaired of salvation. He could be cheered by no scriptural authorities and brought back to the hope of forgiveness by no examples. Yet he is believed to have sinned but little. When the brothers asked him, 'What makes you fear, why do you despair?' he answered, 'I cannot pray as I was used to do, and so I fear hell.' Because he laboured with the vice of _tristitia_, therefore he was filled with _accidia_, and from each of these was despair born in his heart. He was placed in the infirmary and on a certain morning he prepared him for death, and came to his master, saying, 'I can no longer fight against God.' And when his master paid but little attention to his words, he went forth to the fish pond of the monastery near by and threw himself into it and was drowned"[929]. Only a small minority, it is needless to say, was driven to this anguish of despair. For the majority the strain of conventual life found outlet, not in these black moods, but in a tendency to bicker one with another, to get excitement by exaggerating the small events of daily existence into matter for jealousies and disputes. For the strain was a double one; to monotony was added the complete lack of privacy, the wear and tear of communal life; not only always doing the same thing at the same time, but always doing it in company with a number of other people. The beauty of human fellowship, the happy friendliness of life in a close society are too obvious to need description. For if heuene be on this erthe . and ese to any soule, It is in cloistere or in scole . by many skilles I fynde; For in cloistre cometh no man . to chide ne to fighte, But alle is buxomnesse there and bokes . to rede and to lerne, In scole there is scorne . but if a clerke wil lerne, And grete loue and lykynge . for eche of hem loueth other[930].