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It was the bell-ringer going his rounds and opening all the doors; first of all a dog came out, stretching his neck as though he was going to bark with hunger, then two men with their caps over their eyes, wrapped in brown cloaks; the bell-ringer held up the curtain to let them pass out. "Well, good-day, Mariano," said one of them by way of farewell.
Towards the evening, when the bell-ringer entered the church to ring the evening chimes, he saw Anne Lisbeth lying before the altar. She had been there from a very early hour in the morning; her strength was almost exhausted, but her eyes sparkled, her face glowed with a sort of rosy tint.
By the time this letter was received, Monsieur Lousteau-Prangin had verified, by the testimony of the bell-ringer, the market-women and washerwomen, and the miller's men, the truth of Joseph's explanation.
It was resolved that the great bell the one whose casting had been jeopardized through the timidity of the ill-starred workman should be rung upon the entrance of the bier into the cathedral. The most robust man of the country round was assigned the office of bell-ringer.
If I were to follow my poor Joliet through all his transmigrations and metempsychoses, as I have learned them by his hints, allusions and confessions, I should show him by turns working a rope ferry, where the stupid and indolent cattle, whose business it is to draw men, were drawn by him; then letter-carrier; supernumerary and call-boy in a village theatre; road-mender on a vicinal route; then a beadle, a bell-ringer, and a sub-teacher in an infant school, where he distributed his own ignorance impartially amongst his little patrons at the end of a stick; after this, big drum in the New Year's festivals, and ready at a moment's opportunity to throw down the drumstick and plunge among the dancers, for Joliet was a well-hinged lad, and the blood of nineteen years was tingling in his heels.
The office of bell-ringer was performed by every boy successively; and it so happened that, the very first day of my attendance at the school, the turn to ring the bell had, by order of succession, arrived at the place which had been allotted to me; for the master, as I have already observed, was a man of method and order, and every boy had a particular seat, to which he became a fixture as long as he continued at the school.
"I am glad to have you see this man," said the guide, "for he has rung these bells for seventy years, and is said to be more than a hundred years old." I could not obtain a portrait of this decrepit bell-ringer, for many Indians are superstitiously opposed to being photographed; but I procured the picture of an equally shriveled female aged one hundred and thirty who might have been his sister.
A frightened look the first that any one had ever seen in the clear eyes of the Bell-ringer of Angel's passed over them, and he murmured tremulously: "All right I'm stoppin'!" So, too, was his heart, for the wonderful eyes were now slowly glazing. Yet he rallied once more coming up again the third time as it seemed to Wayne and his lips moved slowly.
The bell-ringer passed him several times, following him with uneasy glance, as though this unknown man, of poverty-stricken aspect, who wandered aimlessly about at an hour when the treasures of the church were, as a rule, not so strictly watched, inspired him with little confidence. Another man met him near the high altar.
Sagrario, who had never been out of the upper cloister since her return to the paternal roof, looked at the stars with delight. "How many stars!" she murmured dreamily. "There are more than usual to-night," said the bell-ringer. "The summer sky seems a field of stars in which the harvest increases with the fine weather." Gabriel smiled at the simplicity of his companions.
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