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Updated: June 14, 2025
Winter drives in no sturdy farmers at evening to sit before cheery fires, families meet not at Christmas, and the bells are dumb in belfries; for all by which a man might remember his home has been utterly swept away: has been swept away to make a maniacal dancing ground on which a murderous people dance to their death led by a shallow, clever, callous, imperial clown.
An hour before sunset the belfries of Havre came in sight, and as it was high tide, they drove right up to the harbour wharf. The ship had just loosed her moorings, and was gliding out to sea. Clorinde could recognise Melladoro standing amid the passengers on deck. Half fainting, she stretched out her arms and called him in a piteous voice.
As I told the boys up at the hotel, if there are any real treasure-hunting bugs around, I want to get a good look at 'em especially if they're from New York. That's one on you, eh, Ellins? Proves you have a few folks in the big town who have bats in their belfries, don't it?" That gets an uneasy squirm out of Old Hickory, but he comes right back at him. "Just why?" he demands.
I threatened the three men with my revolver, but they shrieked for mercy and I did not fire. The men in the belfries, however, were showing no mercy to me, so I dropped inside the wall and crawled for shelter beneath a caisson. But, I recognized on the instant that I could not remain there.
In the distance the breezy suburb of Ponsonby is pointed out to us, occupying high ground, from which is visible the winding valley of the Waitemata, stretching away up into the hills. Here and there can be seen the spires or belfries of numerous churches and chapels, for Auckland is an eminently religious city, and has temples and tabernacles for almost every Christian creed.
We forget all that enumeration of palaces and churches and convents which occupies so many pages of admirable description, and the thoughtless reader might be inclined to conclude from this that they were pages thrown away; but this is not so: we forget, indeed, the details, as we forget or do not see the different layers of paint on a completed picture; but the thing desired has been accomplished, and we carry away with us a sense of the "Gothic profile" of the city, of the "surprising forest of pinnacles and towers and belfries," and we know not what of rich and intricate and quaint.
When looking at the Gothic Town Halls of Brussels, Louvain and Bruges, with their flowered traceries and luxury of ornament, one might be misled into taking them for the palaces of the prince rather than for the expression of municipal freedom. There is nothing about them of the strength and defiance expressed in the great "halles" and belfries of Ypres, Bruges and Ghent.
That was, in fact, when, after having long groped one's way up the dark spiral which perpendicularly pierces the thick wall of the belfries, one emerged, at last abruptly, upon one of the lofty platforms inundated with light and air, that was, in fact, a fine picture which spread out, on all sides at once, before the eye; a spectacle sui generis, of which those of our readers who have had the good fortune to see a Gothic city entire, complete, homogeneous, a few of which still remain, Nuremberg in Bavaria and Vittoria in Spain, can readily form an idea; or even smaller specimens, provided that they are well preserved, Vitre in Brittany, Nordhausen in Prussia.
I entered this gigantic granite jewel which is as light as a bit of lace, covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend, and which raise their strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, and which are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the black sky by night.
Palm Sunday, 1899. I went into several small churches to see the sepulchres. Not like our Tuscan ones; wretched things, mainly tinsel and shabby frippery. At Santa Prisca we trespassed into orchards, almond trees barely green, artichokes and dust-heaps, with the belfries of the Aventine behind, the pillared loggia of San Saba, and the great blocks of the Baths of Caracalla in front.
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