Before leaving the abbey, the advocatus diaboli, like the Saint’s advocate before him, stopped at the scriptorium and asked to see the illuminated commemoration of the Leibowitz blueprint ("that dreadful incomprehensibility" as Flaught called it). This time the monk’s hands trembled not with eagerness but with fear, for once again he might be forced to abandon the project. Monsignor Flaught gazed at the lambskin in silence. He swallowed thrice. At last he forced himself to nod.