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3. This counsel I obeyed as well as I could, and it was well with me that I thus obeyed God, who had counselled me; but this was yet a gift from Him. Then collecting my thoughts as best I could, I closed my eyes, ears, mouth, nostrils, and abandoned all contact with external things. Then I entered into the innermost of my heart, and behold! everything therein was darkness. But when, with blinking eyes, I gaze a little around me, I behold a weak light that penetrated through the crevices; and I see above me, in the vaulting of this my little chamber, what appeared to me a large, round, glassy window; but it had been so much soiled and bedaubed that scarce any light came through it.

4. Then, looking around me by means of this dim, scant light, I see on the walls certain small pictures of, as it seemed, sometime pretty work; but the colours had faded, and some portions of the pictures had been hewn off, or broken off. Approaching them more closely, I see on them inscriptions such as Prudence, Meekness, Justice, Chastity, Temperance, and so forth. Then in the middle of the chamber I see divers broken and damaged ladders, and pincers and ropes, that had been damaged and scattered about; item, large