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 aerial 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
siecle_ 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