Durtal was in a situation familiar to all bachelors who have the
concierge do their cleaning. Only these know how a tiny lamp can fairly
drink up oil, and how the contents of a bottle of cognac can become
paler and weaker without ever diminishing. They know, too, how a once
comfortable bed can become forbidding, and how scrupulously a concierge
can respect its least fold or crease. They learn to be resigned and to
wash out a glass when they are thirsty and make their own fire when they
are cold.
Durtal's concierge was an old man with drooping moustache and a powerful
breath of "three-six." Indolent and placid, he opposed an unbudgeable
inertia to Durtal's frantic and profanely expressed demand that the
sweeping be done at the same hour every morning.
Threats, prayers, insults, the withholding of gratuities, were without
effect. Père Rateau took off his cap, scratched his head, promised, in
the tone of a man much moved, to mend his ways, and next day came later
than ever.
"What a nuisance!" thought Durtal today, as he heard a key turning in
the lock, then he looked at his watch and observed that once again the
concierge was arriving after three o'clock in the afternoon.
There was nothing for it but to submit with a sigh to the ensuing
hullabaloo. Rateau, somnolent and pacific in his lodge, became a demon
when he got a broom in his hand. In this sedentary being, who could
drowse all morning in the stale basement atmosphere heavy with the
cumulative aroma of many meat-stews, a martial ardour, a warlike
ferocity, then asserted themselves, and like a red revolutionary he
assaulted the bed, charged the chairs, manhandled the picture frames,
knocked the tables over, rattled the water pitcher, and whirled Durtal's
brogues about by the laces as when a pillaging conqueror hauls a
ravished victim along by the hair. So he stormed the apartment like a
barricade and triumphantly brandished his battle standard, the dust rag,
over the reeking carnage of the furniture.
Durtal at such times sought refuge in the room which was not being
attacked. Today Rateau launched his offensive against the workroom, so
Durtal fled to the bedroom. From there, through the half open door, he
could see the enemy, with a feather duster like a Mohican war bonnet
over his head, doing a scalp dance around a table.
"If I only knew at what time that pest would break in on me so I could
always arrange to be out!" groaned Durtal. Now he ground his teeth, as
Rateau, with a yell, grabbed up the mop and, skating around on one leg,
belaboured the floor lustily.
The perspiring conqueror then appeared in the doorway and advanced to
reduce the chamber where Durtal was. The latter had to return to the
subjugated workroom, and the cat, shocked by the racket, arched its back
and, rubbing against its master's legs, followed him to a place of
safety.
In the thick of the conflict Des Hermies rang the door bell.
"I'll put on my shoes," cried Durtal, "and we'll get out of this.
Look--" he passed his hand over the table and brought back a coat of
grime that made him appear to be wearing a grey glove--"look. That brute
turns the house upside down and knocks everything to pieces, and here's
the result. He leaves more dust when he goes than he found when he came
in!"
"Bah," said Des Hermies, "dust isn't a bad thing. Besides having the
taste of ancient biscuit and the smell of an old book, it is the
floating velvet which softens hard surfaces, the fine dry wash which
takes the garishness out of crude colour schemes. It is the caparison of
abandon, the veil of oblivion. Who, then, can despise it--aside from
certain persons whose lamentable lot must often have wrung a tear from
you?
"Imagine living in one of these Paris _passages_. Think of a consumptive
spitting blood and suffocating in a room one flight up, behind the
'ass-back' gables of, say the passage des Panoramas, for instance. When
the window is open the dust comes in impregnated with snuff and
saturated with clammy exudations. The invalid, choking, begs for air,
and in order that he may breathe the window is _closed_.
"Well, the dust that you complain of is rather milder than that. Anyway
I don't hear you coughing.... But if you're ready we'll be on our way."
"Where shall we go?" asked Durtal.
Des Hermies did not answer. They left the rue du Regard, in which Durtal
lived, and went down the rue du Cherche-Midi as far as the Croix-Rouge.
"Let's go on to the place Saint-Sulpice," said Des Hermies, and after a
silence he continued, "Speaking of dust, 'out of which we came and to
which we shall return,' do you know that after we are dead our corpses
are devoured by different kinds of worms according as we are fat or
thin? In fat corpses one species of maggot is found, the rhizophagus,
while thin corpses are patronized only by the phora. The latter is
evidently the aristocrat, the fastidious gourmet which turns up its nose
at a heavy meal of copious breasts and juicy fat bellies. Just think,
there is no perfect equality, even in the manner in which we feed the
worms.
"But this is where we stop."
They had come to where the rue Férou opens into the place Saint-Sulpice.
Durtal looked up and on an unenclosed porch in the flank of the church
of Saint-Sulpice he read the placard, "Tower open to visitors."
"Let's go up," said Des Hermies.
"What for! In this weather?" and Durtal pointed at the yellow sky over
which black clouds, like factory smoke, were racing, so low that the tin
chimneys seemed to penetrate them and crenelate them with little spots
of clarity. "I am not enthusiastic about trying to climb a flight of
broken, irregular stairs. And anyway, what do you think you can see up
there? It's misty and getting dark. No, have a heart."
"What difference is it to you where you take your airing? Come on. I
assure you you will see something unusual."
"Oh! you brought me here on purpose?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you say so?"
He followed Des Hermies into the darkness under the porch. At the back
of the cellarway a little essence lamp, hanging from a nail, lighted a
door, the tower entrance.
For a long time, in utter darkness, they climbed a winding stair. Durtal
was wondering where the keeper had gone, when, turning a corner, he saw
a shaft of light, then he stumbled against the rickety supports of a
"double-current" lamp in front of a door. Des Hermies pulled a bell cord
and the door swung back.
Above them on a landing they could see feet, whether of a man or of a
woman they could not tell.
"Ah! it's you, M. des Hermies," and a woman bent over, describing an
arc, so that her head was in a stream of light. "Louis will be very glad
to see you."
"Is he in?" asked Des Hermies, reaching up and shaking hands with the
woman.
"He is in the tower. Won't you stop and rest a minute?"
"Why, when we come down, if you don't mind."
"Then go up until you see a grated door--but what an old fool I am! You
know the way as well as I do."
"To be sure, to be sure.... But, in passing, permit me to introduce my
friend Durtal."
Durtal, somewhat flustered, made a bow in the darkness.
"Ah, monsieur, how fortunate. Louis is so anxious to meet you."
"Where is he taking me?" Durtal wondered as again he groped along behind
his friend, now and then, just as he felt completely lost, coming to the
narrow strip of light admitted by a barbican, and again proceeding in
inky darkness. The climb seemed endless. Finally they came to the barred
door, opened it, and found themselves on a frame balcony with the abyss
above and below. Des Hermies, who seemed perfectly at home, pointed
downward, then upward. They were halfway up a tower the face of which
was overlaid with enormous criss-crossing joists and beams riveted
together with bolt heads as big as a man's fist. Durtal could see no
one. He turned and, clinging to the hand rail, groped along the wall
toward the daylight which stole down between the inclined leaves of the
sounding-shutters.
Leaning out over the precipice, he discerned beneath him a formidable
array of bells hanging from oak supports lined with iron. The sombre
bell metal was slick as if oiled and absorbed light without refracting
it. Bending backward, he looked into the upper abyss and perceived new
batteries of bells overhead. These bore the raised effigy of a bishop,
and a place in each, worn by the striking of the clapper, shone golden.
All were in quiescence, but the wind rattled against the
sounding-shutters, stormed through the cage of timbers, howled along the
spiral stair, and was caught and held whining in the bell vases.
Suddenly a light breeze, like the stirring of confined air, fanned his
cheek. He looked up. The current had been set in motion by the swaying
of a great bell beginning to get under way. There was a crash of sound,
the bell gathered momentum, and now the clapper, like a gigantic pestle,
was grinding the great bronze mortar with a deafening clamour. The tower
trembled, the balcony on which Durtal was standing trepidated like the
floor of a railway coach, there was the continuous rolling of a mighty
reverberation, interrupted regularly by the jar of metal upon metal.
In vain Durtal scanned the upper abyss. Finally he managed to catch
sight of a leg, swinging out into space and back again, in one of those
wooden stirrups, two of which, he had noticed, were fastened to the
bottom of every bell. Leaning out so that he was almost prone on one of
the timbers, he finally perceived the ringer, clinging with his hands to
two iron handles and balancing over the gulf with his eyes turned
heavenward.
Durtal was shocked by the face. Never had he seen such disconcerting
pallor. It was not the waxen hue of the convalescent, not the lifeless
grey of the perfume- or snuff-maker, it was a prison pallor of a
bloodless lividness unknown today, the ghastly complexion of a wretch of
the Middle Ages shut up till death in a damp, airless, pitch-dark
_in-pace_.
The eyes were blue, prominent, even bulging, and had the mystic's
readiness to tears, but their expression was singularly contradicted by
the truculent Kaiser Wilhelm moustache. The man seemed at once a dreamer
and a fighter, and it would have been difficult to tell which character
predominated.
He gave the bell stirrup a last yank with his foot and with a heave of
his loins regained his equilibrium. He mopped his brow and smiled down
at Des Hermies.
"Well! well!" he said, "you here."
He descended, and when he learned Durtal's name his face brightened and
the two shook hands cordially.
"We have been expecting you a long time, monsieur. Our friend here
speaks of you at great length, and we have been asking him why he didn't
bring you around to see us. But come," he said eagerly, "I must conduct
you on a tour of inspection about my little domain. I have read your
books and I know a man like you can't help falling in love with my
bells. But we must go higher if we are really to see them."
And he bounded up a staircase, while Des Hermies pushed Durtal along in
front of him in a way that made retreat impossible.
As he was once more groping along the winding stairs, Durtal asked, "Why
didn't you tell me your friend Carhaix--for of course that's who he
is--was a bell-ringer?"
Des Hermies did not have time to answer, for at that moment, having
reached the door of the room beneath the tower roof, Carhaix was
standing aside to let them pass. They were in a rotunda pierced in the
centre by a great circular hole which had around it a corroded iron
balustrade orange with rust. By standing close to the railing, which was
like the well curb of the Pit, one could see down, down, to the
foundation. The "well" seemed to be undergoing repairs, and from the top
to the bottom of the tube the beams supporting the bells were
crisscrossed with timbers bracing the walls.
"Don't be afraid to lean over," said Carhaix. "Now tell me, monsieur,
how do you like my foster children?"
But Durtal was hardly heeding. He felt uneasy, here in space, and as if
drawn toward the gaping chasm, whence ascended, from time to time, the
desultory clanging of the bell, which was still swaying and would be
some time in returning to immobility.
He recoiled.
"Wouldn't you like to pay a visit to the top of the tower?" asked
Carhaix, pointing to an iron stair sealed into the wall.
"No, another day."
They descended and Carhaix, in silence, opened a door. They advanced
into an immense storeroom, containing colossal broken statues of saints,
scaly and dilapidated apostles, Saint Matthew legless and armless, Saint
Luke escorted by a fragmentary ox, Saint Mark lacking a shoulder and
part of his beard, Saint Peter holding up an arm from which the hand
holding the keys was broken off.
"There used to be a swing in here," said Carhaix, "for the little girls
of the neighbourhood. But the privilege was abused, as privileges always
are. In the dusk all kinds of things were done for a few sous. The
curate finally had the swing taken down and the room closed up."
"And what is that over there?" inquired Durtal, perceiving, in a
corner, an enormous fragment of rounded metal, like half a gigantic
skull-cap. On it the dust lay thick, and in the hollow the meshes on
meshes of fine silken web, dotted with the black bodies of lurking
spiders, were like a fisherman's hand net weighted with little slugs of
lead.
"That? Ah, monsieur!" and there was fire in Carhaix's mild eyes, "that
is the skull of an old, old bell whose like is not cast these days. The
ring of that bell, monsieur, was like a voice from heaven." And suddenly
he exploded, "Bells have had their day!--As I suppose Des Hermies has
told you.--Bell ringing is a lost art. And why wouldn't it be? Look at
the men who are doing it nowadays. Charcoal burners, roofers, masons out
of a job, discharged firemen, ready to try their hand at anything for a
franc. There are curates who think nothing of saying, 'Need a man? Go
out in the street and pick up a soldier for ten sous. He'll do.' That's
why you read about accidents like the one that happened lately at Notre
Dame, I think. The fellow didn't withdraw in time and the bell came down
like the blade of a guillotine and whacked his leg right off.
"People will spend thirty thousand francs on an altar baldachin, and
ruin themselves for music, and they have to have gas in their churches,
and Lord knows what all besides, but when you mention bells they shrug
their shoulders. Do you know, M. Durtal, there are only two men in Paris
who can ring chords? Myself and Père Michel, and he is not married and
his morals are so bad that he can't be regularly attached to a church.
He can ring music the like of which you never heard, but he, too, is
losing interest. He drinks, and, drunk or sober, goes to work, then he
bowls up again and goes to sleep.
"Yes, the bell has had its day. Why, this very morning, Monsignor made
his pastoral visit to this church. At eight o'clock we sounded his
arrival. The six bells you see down here boomed out melodiously. But
there were sixteen up above, and it was a shame. Those extras jangled
away haphazard. It was a riot of discord."
Carhaix ruminated in silence as they descended. Then, "Ah, monsieur," he
said, his watery eyes fairly bubbling, "the ring of bells, there's your
real sacred music."
They were now above the main door of the building and they came out into
the great covered gallery on which the towers rest. Carhaix smiled and
pointed out a complete peal of miniature bells, installed between two
pillars on a plank. He pulled the cords, and, in ecstasies, his eyes
protruding, his moustache bristling, he listened to the frail tinkling
of his toy.
And suddenly he relinquished the cords.
"I once had a crazy idea," he said, "of forming a class here and
teaching all the intricacies of the craft, but no one cared to learn a
trade which was steadily going out of existence. Why, you know we don't
even sound for weddings any more, and nobody comes to look at the tower.
"But I really can't complain. I hate the streets. When I try to cross
one I lose my head. So I stay in the tower all day, except once in the
early morning when I go to the other side of the square for a bucket of
water. Now my wife doesn't like it up here. You see, the snow does come
in through all the loopholes and it heaps up, and sometimes we are
snowbound with the wind blowing a gale."
They had come to Carhaix's lodge. His wife was waiting for them on the
threshold.
"Come in, gentlemen," she said. "You have certainly earned some
refreshment," and she pointed to four glasses which she had set out on
the table.
The bell-ringer lighted a little briar pipe, while Des Hermies and
Durtal each rolled a cigarette.
"Pretty comfortable place," remarked Durtal, just to be saying
something. It was a vast room, vaulted, with walls of rough stone, and
lighted by a semi-circular window just under the ceiling. The tiled
floor was badly covered by an infamous carpet, and the furniture, very
simple, consisted of a round dining-room table, some old _bergère_
armchairs covered with slate-blue Utrecht velours, a little stained
walnut sideboard on which were several plates and pitchers of Breton
faience, and opposite the sideboard a little black bookcase, which might
contain fifty books.
"Of course a literary man would be interested in the books," said
Carhaix, who had been watching Durtal. "You mustn't be too critical,
monsieur. I have only the tools of my trade."
Durtal went over and took a look. The collection consisted largely of
works on bells. He read some of the titles:
On the cover of a slim parchment volume he deciphered the faded legend,
hand-written, in rust-coloured ink, "_De tintinnabulis_ by Jerome
Magius, 1664"; then, pell-mell, there were: _A curious and edifying
miscellany concerning church bells_ by Dom Rémi Carré; another _Edifying
miscellany_, anonymous; a _Treatise of bells_ by Jean-Baptiste Thiers,
curate of Champrond and Vibraye; a ponderous tome by an architect named
Blavignac; a smaller work entitled _Essay on the symbolism of bells_ by
a parish priest of Poitiers; a _Notice_ by the abbé Baraud; then a whole
series of brochures, with covers of grey paper, bearing no titles.
"It's no collection at all," said Carhaix with a sigh. "The best ones
are wanting, the _De campanis commentarius_ of Angelo Rocca and the _De
tintinnabulo_ of Percichellius, but they are so hard to find, and so
expensive when you do find them."
A glance sufficed for the rest of the books, most of them being pious
works, Latin and French Bibles, an _Imitation of Christ_, Görres'
_Mystik_ in five volumes, the abbé Aubert's _History and theory of
religious symbolism_, Pluquet's _Dictionary of heresies_, and several
lives of saints.
"Ah, monsieur, my own books are not much account, but Des Hermies lends
me what he knows will interest me."
"Don't talk so much!" said his wife. "Give monsieur a chance to sit
down," and she handed Durtal a brimming glass aromatic with the
acidulous perfume of genuine cider.
In response to his compliments she told him that the cider came from
Brittany and was made by relatives of hers at Landévennec, her and
Carhaix's native village.
She was delighted when Durtal affirmed that long ago he had spent a day
in Landévennec.
"Why, then we know each other already!" she said, shaking hands with him
again.
The room was heated to suffocation by a stove whose pipe zigzagged over
to the window and out through a sheet-iron square nailed to the sash in
place of one of the panes. Carhaix and his good wife, with her honest,
weak face and frank, kind eyes, were the most restful of people. Durtal,
made drowsy by the warmth and the quiet domesticity, let his thoughts
wander. He said to himself, "If I had a place like this, above the roofs
of Paris, I would fix it up and make of it a real haven of refuge. Here,
in the clouds, alone and aloof, I would work away on my book and take my
time about it, years perhaps. What inconceivable happiness it would be
to escape from the age, and, while the waves of human folly were
breaking against the foot of the tower, to sit up here, out of it all,
and pore over antique tomes by the shaded light of the lamp."
He smiled at the naïveté of his daydream.
"I certainly do like your place," he said aloud, as if to sum up his
reflections.
"Oh, you wouldn't if you had to live here," said the good wife. "We have
plenty of room, too much room, because there are a couple of bedchambers
as big as this, besides plenty of closet space, but it's so
inconvenient--and so cold! And no kitchen--" and she pointed to a
landing where, blocking the stairway, the cook stove had had to be
installed. "And there are so many, many steps to go up when you come
back from market. I am getting old, and I have a twinge of the
rheumatics whenever I think about making the climb."
"You can't even drive a nail into this rock wall and have a peg to hang
things on," said Carhaix. "But I like this place. I was made for it. Now
my wife dreams constantly of spending her last days in Landévennec."
Des Hermies rose. All shook hands, and monsieur and madame made Durtal
swear that he would come again.
"What refreshing people!" exclaimed Durtal as he and Des Hermies crossed
the square.
"And Carhaix is a mine of information."
"But tell me, what the devil is an educated man, of no ordinary
intelligence, doing, working as a--as a day labourer?"
"If Carhaix could hear you! But, my friend, in the Middle Ages
bell-ringers were high officials. True, the craft has declined
considerably in modern times. I couldn't tell you myself how Carhaix
became hipped on the subject of bells. All I know is that he studied at
a seminary in Brittany, that he had scruples of conscience and
considered himself unworthy to enter the priesthood, that he came to
Paris and apprenticed himself to a very intellectual master bell-ringer,
Père Gilbert, who had in his cell at Notre Dame some ancient and of
course unique plans of Paris that would make your mouth water. Gilbert
wasn't a 'labourer,' either. He was an enthusiastic collector of
documents relating to old Paris. From Notre Dame Carhaix came to Saint
Sulpice, fifteen years ago, and has been there ever since."
"How did you happen to make his acquaintance?"
"First he was my patient, then my friend. I've known him ten years."
"Funny. He doesn't look like a seminary product. Most of them have the
shuffling gait and sheepish air of an old gardener."
"Carhaix will be all right for a few more years," said Des Hermies, as
if to himself, "and then let us mercifully wish him a speedy death. The
Church, which has begun by sanctioning the introduction of gas into the
chapels, will end by installing mechanical chimes instead of bells. That
will be charming. The machinery will be run by electricity and we shall
have real up-to-date, timbreless, Protestant peals."
"Then Carhaix's wife will have a chance to go back to Finistère."
"No, they are too poor, and then too Carhaix would be broken-hearted if
he lost his bells. Curious, a man's affection for the object that he
manipulates. The mechanic's love for his machine. The thing that one
tends, and that obeys one, becomes personalized, and one ends by falling
in love with it. And the bell is an instrument in a class of its own. It
is baptized like a Christian, anointed with sacramental oil, and
according to the pontifical rubric it is also to be sanctified, in the
interior of its chalice, by a bishop, in seven cruciform unctions with
the oil of the infirm that it may send to the dying the message which
shall sustain them in their last agonies.
"It is the herald of the Church, the voice from without as the priest is
the voice from within. So you see it isn't a mere piece of bronze, a
reversed mortar to be swung at a rope's end. Add that bells, like fine
wines, ripen with age, that their tone becomes more ample and mellow,
that they lose their sharp bouquet, their raw flavour. That will
explain--imperfectly--how one can become attached to them."
"Why, you seem to be an enthusiast yourself."
"Oh, I don't know anything about it. I am simply repeating what I have
heard Carhaix say. If the subject interests you, he will be only too
glad to teach you the symbolism of bells. He is inexhaustible. The man
is a monomaniac."
"I can understand," said Durtal dreamily. "I live in a quarter where
there are a good many convents and at dawn the air is a-tingle with the
vibrance of the chimes. When I was ill I used to lie awake at night
awaiting the sound of the matin bells and welcoming them as a
deliverance. In the grey light I felt that I was being cuddled by a
distant and secret caress, that a lullaby was crooned over me, and a
cool hand applied to my burning forehead. I had the assurance that the
folk who were awake were praying for the others, and consequently for
me. I felt less lonely. I really believe the bells are sounded for the
special benefit of the sick who cannot sleep."
"The bells ring for others, notably for the trouble-makers. The rather
common inscription for the side of a bell, '_Paco cruentos_,' 'I pacify
the bloody-minded,' is singularly apt, when you think it over."
This conversation was still haunting Durtal when he went to bed.
Carhaix's phrase, "The ring of the bells is the real sacred music," took
hold of him like an obsession. And drifting back through the centuries
he saw in dream the slow processional of monks and the kneeling
congregations responding to the call of the angelus and drinking in the
balm of holy sound as if it were consecrated wine.
All the details he had ever known of the liturgies of ages came crowding
into his mind. He could hear the sounding of matin invitatories; chimes
telling a rosary of harmony over tortuous labyrinths of narrow streets,
over cornet towers, over pepper-box pignons, over dentelated walls; the
chimes chanting the canonical hours, prime and tierce, sexte and none,
vespers and compline; celebrating the joy of a city with the tinkling
laughter of the little bells, tolling its sorrow with the ponderous
lamentation of the great ones. And there were master ringers in those
times, makers of chords, who could send into the air the expression of
the whole soul of a community. And the bells which they served as
submissive sons and faithful deacons were as humble and as truly of the
people as was the Church itself. As the priest at certain times put off
his chasuble, so the bell at times had put off its sacred character and
spoken to the baptized on fair day and market day, inviting them, in the
event of rain, to settle their affairs inside the nave of the church
and, that the sanctity of the place might not be violated by the
conflicts arising from sharp bargaining, imposing upon them a probity
unknown before or since.
Today bells spoke an obsolete language, incomprehensible to man. Carhaix
was under no misapprehension. Living in an aërial tomb outside the human
scramble, he was faithful to his art, and in consequence no longer had
any reason for existing. He vegetated, superfluous and demoded, in a
society which insisted that for its amusement the holy place be turned
into a concert hall. He was like a creature reverted, a relic of a
bygone age, and he was supremely contemptuous of the miserable _fin de
siècle_ church showmen who to draw fashionable audiences did not fear to
offer the attraction of cavatinas and waltzes rendered on the cathedral
organ by manufacturers of profane music, by ballet mongers and comic
opera-wrights.
"Poor Carhaix!" said Durtal, as he blew out the candle. "Another who
loves this epoch about as well as Des Hermies and I do. But he has the
tutelage of his bells, and certainly among his wards he has his
favourite. He is not to be pitied. He has his hobby, which renders life
possible for him, as hobbies do."