Friar Gregory ceased reading, and looked round the little room. A low truckle-bed occupied one side, two other walls were lined with oaken book-cases quaintly carved, and on the fourth hung a few articles of simple clothing. The bookshelves were full of large books, bound, some in vellum, some in leather. The Friar sat on a wooden chair at a low table whereon flared a bronze lamp. _Intrate per angustam portam, quia lata porta est quae ducit ad perditionem._ As he looked up from the minuscule of the parchment, the guttering flame of the lamp hurt his tired eyes and a yellow mist surged before them. Little beads of moisture hung upon the stone wall and the air was close. _Quam angusta porta, et arcta via est quae ducit ad vitam._ His vision cleared and his eyes wandered among the books which he knew so well and the pages of which he had turned so often, and as scholars said, to such good account: _Homilia Sancti Augustini_, _Origen de Virginitate_, _Divi Lanfranci Liber de Corpore et Sanguine Domini Nostri_, _Joannis Scoit de_ _Eucharista_, and the rest of the abstruse works in Theology, Logic, and Music upon which he had spent the vigour of his manhood. His eyes were wont to glow with affectionate reverence when they lighted on the books, the Noble Masters whom he had followed these thirty years with more zeal and enthusiasm than a lover his mistress. But to-night the Friar’s spirit was heavy; his eyes ached, his brain comprehended only with difficulty the sense of the written words; hope and self-belief seem to have been suddenly extinguished in his breast. The faith in his labours, which had made them labours of desire to him, seemed suddenly departed, and his life looking forward, looking backward, appeared a blank, a desert, a precious period in the endless and remorseless procession of time, irrevocably wasted in misdirected effort. This state of mind had come upon him in a moment as it were, or rather, he had only apprehended it the instant he had raised his eyes from his book. He sat motionless a few minutes. Outside, the bell of St. Mary the Virgin tolled eight o’clock. The Friar sighed and raised his hand to his head. That day his lecture in the Schools had been exceptionally well received. Never before had Bradwardine and St. Augustine been so acutely elucidated in the University, and as he finished his exposition the scholars had risen to their feet and had clapped and cheered him. Many learned Doctors and Professors had crowded round to applaud and congratulate him. Yet the _doctissimus frater_, the _erudissimus lector_ had lost heart. Learning is a bitter-sweet fruit.