"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."