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The faithful and "God's creatures" knew one another; every morning they were the first occupants of the church, and this daily meeting had established a kind of fraternity, and with much coughing and hoarseness they all lamented the cold of the morning and the lateness of the bell-ringer in coming down to open the doors.
Gabriel, looking at his companion, felt the gentle selfishness that a living man feels when a great man dies. "So the great fall, Sagrario, and we, the sickly and wretched, have still some life before us." At the hour of locking up the church he went down to begin his watch. The bell-ringer was waiting for him with the keys. "How about the Cardinal?" inquired Gabriel.
On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular intervals. He was the only living thing within view, unless we are to count the river. On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells.
But by the good help of Jean Magne the bell-ringer and with the protection of Our Lady, whose Hours he had aforetime written, Florent Guillaume found a perch o' nights in the steeple of the Cathedral. The scrivener and the lace-maker had much ado to live. Marguerite only kept body and soul together by chance and charity, for she had long lost her good looks and she hated the lace-making.
"It's only half the time he means anything by what he says." "That's jest what I hate about him," returned the bell-ringer in a tone of high complaint; "you can't never tell which half it is. Look at him now!"
It is a huge bronze bell raised from the ground only about a foot. It possesses a fine rich tone when it is hammered upon by the bell-ringer, but a good deal of the sonorousness is lost and the sound made dreary and monotonous by its being so low down. The man rings it by striking heavy blows at it with a big wooden mallet, and its first note in the early morning makes the drowsy gate-keepers of the town begin to make preparations for establishing communication once more between the capital and the outer world; while at sunset, as its last melancholy notes are blown away in dying waves by the wind, the heavy gates are closed, and every man though not every woman, as we shall see has to retire to his home until dawn the next morning, if he wishes to escape a severe flogging, or even the risk of losing his head. The laws and rules in this respect have not been very severely enforced of late years; yet one never sees even now a Corean male walking about the streets after dark. Though capital punishment might not be inflicted on the offender, a very sound spanking would very probably be the result of a native being caught flagrante delicto during a nocturnal peregrination. Wherefore, the Corean male is,
A very large number of factories or of communes had received legacies for maintaining a school; the instructor often enjoyed, through an endowment, a metayer farm or a piece of ground; he was generally provided with a lodging; if he was a layman he was exempt, besides, from the most onerous taxes; as sexton, beadle, chorister or bell-ringer, he had small perquisites; finally, he was paid for each child four or five sous a month; sometimes, especially in poor districts, he taught only from All Saints' day down to the spring, and followed another occupation during the summer.
The light you see is our bright tropical moon. It's not the sun." And all the workers laughed, and Mary laughed with them. "I guess I'm not a very good bell-ringer," she said. Mary's real job was to teach the children in the school on Mission Hill. She remembered how she had played when she was a little girl that she was teaching the children of Calabar. Now she was really doing it.
They all listened to Gabriel open-mouthed with astonishment, and their bright eyes seemed dazed and bewildered. "It is enough to drive one mad," murmured the bell-ringer. "What then is man, Gabriel?" "Nothing; even as this earth, which seems so large, and that we have peopled with religions, kingdoms and revelations from God, is nothing. Dreams of ants! even less!
A short time after this fracas, a personage of venerable appearance presented himself at Epinal, and applied for the post of sacristan and bell-ringer, at that time vacant. Though he squinted, his appearance was far from disagreeable, and he obtained the appointment without difficulty.