Chapter I. Our arrival at Abbot Serapion's cell, and inquiry on the different kinds of faults and the way to overcome them.

In that assembly of Ancients and Elders was a man named Serapion, [1312] especially endowed with the grace of discretion, whose Conference I think it is worth while to set down in writing. For when we entreated him to discourse of the way to overcome our faults, so that their origin and cause might be made clearer to us, he thus began.