“When the measured hammering of the heavy bell ceases an instant and its distant echo, blent with the cloud of tones that the wind carries away, is lost, there begins to be heard the sad, uneven, piercing melody of a little clapper-bell.”
“I am,” it says, “the voice that sings the joys and bewails the sorrows of the village which I dominate from my spire; I am the humble bell of the hamlet, that calls down with ardent petitions water from heaven upon the parched fields, the bell that with its pious conjurations puts the storms to flight, the bell that whirls, quivering with emotion, and in wild outcries pleads for succour when fire is devouring the crops.
“I am the friendly voice that bids the poor his last farewell; I am the groan that grief chokes in the throat of the orphan and that mounts on the winged notes of the bell to the throne of the Father of Mercies.
“On hearing my melody, a prayer breaks involuntarily from the lip, and my last echo goes to breathe itself away on the brink of hidden graves--an echo borne by the wind that seems to pray in a low voice as it waves the tall grass that covers them.
“I am the weeping that scalds the cheeks; I am the woe that dries the fount of tears; I am the anguish that presses on the heart with an iron hand; I am the supreme sorrow, the sorrow of the forsaken and forlorn.
“To-day I toll for that nameless multitude which passes through life unheeded, leaving no more trace behind than the broad stream of sweat and tears that marks its course; to-day I toll for those who sleep in earth forgotten, without other monument than a rude cross of wood which, perchance, is hidden by the nettles and the spear-plume thistles, but amid their leaves arise these humble, yellow-petaled flowers that the angels sow over the graves of the just.”
The echo of the clapper-bell grows fainter little by little till it is lost amid the whirlwind of tones, above which are distinguished the crashing, broken strokes of one of those gigantic bells which set shuddering, as they sound, even the deep foundations of the ancient Gothic cathedrals in whose towers we see them suspended.
“I am,” says the bell with its terrible, stentorian peal, “the voice of the stupendous mass of stone which your forefathers raised for the amazement of the ages. I am the mysterious voice familiar to the long-robed virgins, the angels, the kings and the marble prophets who keep watch by night and by day at the church doors, enveloped in the shadows of their arches. I am the voice of the misshapen monsters, of the griffins and prodigious reptiles that crawl among the intertwined stone leaves along the spires of the towers. I am the phantasmal bell of tradition and of legend that swings alone on All Souls’ Night, rung by an invisible hand.