Chapter 15 Summary

On a stroll down a mountain path, the narrator comes to the ruins of a Minoan city. A shepherd pesters him and will not return the narrator to his solitude with a cigarette for his toll. The speaker grows tired of him and leaves. The narrator walks by the sea with no particular agenda until an old man meets him and asks whether he is going to the convent. The narrator realizes that this is exactly where he was headed. The traveler tells the story of the convent's statue of the Martyred Virgin, which bleeds from its chiseled wound once every year.

Chapter 15 Analysis

In searching the Greek countryside in meditation, the narrator meets travelers of his "type," men who seek God in one form or another. The shepherd counts himself lucky except for the lack of a cigarette, supporting the Buddhist precept...