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Updated: June 14, 2025
In the distance, far ahead of the locomotive, the cupolas and belfries were already beginning to sparkle with fires of gold. Through the COUPE passed the conductor and made some imperceptible sign to Horizon. He immediately followed the conductor out to the platform.
Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper on which they were written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: 'I shall sound my trumpets. Capponi answered: 'We will ring our bells. Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a menace that the French king could not face.
Success, however, was complete, and the Palermitans got up to find, to their frantic joy, the Liberator within their gates. According to the old usage their first impulse was to run to the belfries in order to sound the tocsin, but they found that the royalists had removed the clappers of the bells.
One or two round-topped towers and five or six belfries, each holding a large bell, were on the church roof, and a great iron cross at the very top. Night and morning the Mission bells rang to call the Indians to mass or service, and chimes or tunes were rung on holidays or for weddings.
Around this inclosure could be seen three distinct towns: Kitai-Gorod, Beloi-Gorod, Zemlianai-Gorod European, Tartar, and Chinese quarters of great extent, commanded by towers, belfries, minarets, and the cupolas of three hundred churches, with green domes, surmounted by the silver cross. A little winding river, here and there reflected the rays of the moon.
Solemn, querulous, sepulchral, quavering, silvery, close at hand, or modulated into a dim echo by the distance, the voice of the inexorable hours vibrated over the capital, and then ceased. Alas, for the heart of Cagliostro! The solitary watcher shuddered as the metallic sounds floated in from the belfries.
To finish with the knights, I turned my steps toward the Church of St. John the Pantheon of the Order. Its façade, with a triangular porch flanked by two towers terminating in stone belfries, having for ornament only four pillars, and pierced by a window and door, without sculpture or decoration, by no means prepares the traveler for the splendor within.
I entered this gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its effect as a bit of lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend.
A bright winter night; the high houses and belfries standing out against a deep blue heaven luminous, shimmering like steel with myriads of stars; the moon has not yet risen. There was no light in the windows; but, after a little effort, the door opened and I entered the church, the altar, as usual, brilliantly illuminated.
From my roof-top, whither I am fled to snatch what cooler airs may drift into this cup of earth, I can see above the straggling tiles of gable and loggia the cupolas and belfries of many churches. I know they are all dead; for I have wound a devious way through the close inhospitable streets and met them or their ghosts at every corner.
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