All around the cluttered cloisters, musty rooms and high, vaulted halls there was a deep and tangible hush. The only light in the virtually impenetrable gloom was of a peculiarly pellucid green, spilling out feebly from every heavy wooden door and misaligned stone. Everywhere, there was a terrible sense of stagnancy, imbuing the whole place with a fetid, neglected atmosphere, as though some great cathedral had been flooded by a brackish lagoon. From out of the cobwebbed shadows emerged a little group of very old men, resplendent in their ornately decorated robes.
