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In this short
passage, Durtal and his friend, des Hermies, talk about a couple,
Monsieur and Madame Carhaix, the male half of whom is a very pious
bell-ringer who loves his work with a passion.
"What excellent
people," he exclaimed, as soon as they found themselves back on the
Place Saint-Sulpice.
"Not to mention that Carhaix is an invaluable man to consult, since
he's so well-informed about a lot of things."
"But, tell me...how is it that such a learned man, the sort of man you
don't meet everyday, practises a trade, that of a manual labourer....
is a worker, in short?"
"If he could hear you! But, my friend, the bell-ringers of the Middle
Ages weren't miserable wretches, though it's true that modern
bell-ringers are a degenerate lot. As for telling you why Carhaix is so
in love with his bells, I don't know. All I know is that he undertook
his studies at a seminary in Brittany, that he had scruples of
conscience and didn't believe himself to be worthy of the priesthood,
and that at Paris, where he went next, he was the pupil of a very
clever and well-read master bell-ringer, Father Cilbert, who kept some
old and very rare maps of Paris in his cell at Notre-Dame. He wasn't a
manual labourer either, rather he was an obsessive collector of
documents relating to old Paris. From Notre-Dame, Carhaix moved to
Saint-Sulpice where he's been settled for more than fifteen years."
"And how did you come to know him?"
"In my capacity as a doctor, at first, then I became his friend ten
years ago."
"Its funny, he doesn't have that gait that old seminarians have, like
some shuffling gardener."
"Carhaix is good for a few more years yet," said des Hermies, as if
talking to himself. "After that, it'll be time enough for him to die.
The Church, which has begun by installing gas in the chapels, will end
up by replacing bells with powerful electronic chimes. Now that will be
charming, all those mechanisms connected up by electric wires, it'll be
true Protestant bell-ringing: short, sharp calls to order."
"Well, that'll be the time for Carhaix's wife to go back to Finist�re!"
"They couldn't do it because they're so poor, and besides, Carhaix
would pine away if he lost his bells.. All the same, it's curious this
affection a man has for the object he loves, it's the same love a
mechanic has for his machine, you end up loving the thing that obeys
you and that is under your care as much as a living creature. It's true
that the bell is an instrument apart, that it's baptised just as if it
was a person and anointed with the chrism of salvation to consecrate
it. And after a Pontifical blessing, moreover, it's sanctified in its
chalice-like interior by a bishop, being anointed with holy oil seven
times in the form of a cross for the sick, so that it thereby carries a
consoling voice to the dying and sustains them in their last agonies.
It's also the Church's herald, its external voice, as the priest is its
voice within. It's not just a simple piece of bronze, a mortar that you
could turn upside down and shake. Added to which, like old wines, bells
improve with age, their voices become fuller and more supple, they lose
their shrill bouquet, their immature tone. That goes some way to
explain how you get so attached to them."
"You're quite taken with bells aren't you!"
"Me?" responded des Hermies laughing, "I don't know anything, I'm
repeating what I've heard Carhaix say. All the same, if the subject
interests you, you should ask him to explain it, he'll teach you the
symbolism of the bell, he's inexhaustible, knows all about it like no
one else."
"What is certain," said Durtal thoughtfully, "is that I live in an area
full of monasteries, in a street the very air of which vibrates at dawn
with waves of pealing bells, and whenever I'm ill during the night, I
wait for the call of the bells in the morning to bring me relief. Then,
at daybreak, I feel myself lulled by a kind of gentle rocking, pampered
by a mysterious far-off caress, it's like a bandage, so smooth and so
fresh, and I have the assurance that upright people are praying for
others -- and consequently for me -- and I feel less alone. So it's
true, at least, that their chimes are especially suited to those who
are ill and who can't sleep."
"Not only for the sick, the bells also act like bromide on war-like
souls. The inscription carried by one of them, paco cruentos --
'I pacify the embittered' -- is singularly apt when you think about it."
This conversation haunted Durtal and, when he was alone in his room
that evening, he was seized by troubled dreams in his bed. That phrase
of the bell-ringer, that the true music of the Church was that of the
bells, came back to him again and again like an obsession. And his
reverie suddenly carried him back several centuries, evoking, amid the
slow processions of monks in the Middle Ages, a kneeling throng of the
faithful, responding to the call of the angelus and drinking in, like a
blessed draught of consecrated wine, the sweet drops of their pure
chimes.
All the details that he had once known of ancient litanies crowded in
on him: the Invitatories to Matins, the bells telling the harmonious
beads of their rosaries over those narrow, winding streets, over those
conical turrets, those sentry-box gables, over those walls pierced by
water-spouts and crenellations, carillons singing out the canonical
hours, prime and terce, sext and nones, vespers and compline,
celebrating the gaiety of a city through the delicate laughter of its
small bells, or its distress, through the massive tears of its mournful
bass.
In those days they were expert bell-ringers, true masters, who could
echo the state of the town's soul with these airborne joys or sorrows.
And the bell which they were serving like obedient sons, like faithful
deacons, was made in the very image of the medieval Church itself,
humble and of the people. At certain times, it would divest itself of
its pious tones, like a priest stripped of his chasuble. It spoke to
the ordinary people on market days and at fairs, inviting them when it
rained to discuss their business in the nave of the church, and,
through the sanctity of the place, imposing on those inevitable bouts
of hard negotiating an integrity which has been lost forever.
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