and out round the columns, wishing to prolong their possession of the
fane, till the first rays of the sun shone through the windows; they
fluttered over the heads of the devotees, who, kneeling before the
altars, were praying loudly, as pleased to be in the Cathedral at that
early hour as though it were their own house. Others chattered with
the acolytes and other servants of the church, who were coming in by
the different doors, sleepy and stretching themselves like workmen
coming to their work. In the twilight, figures in black cloaks glided
by on their way to the sacristy, stopping to make genuflections before
each image; and in the distance, invisible in the darkness, you
could still divine the presence of the bell-ringer, like a restless
hobgoblin, by the rattle of his bunch of keys and the creaking of the
doors he opened on his round.

The Cathedral was awake. Echo repeated the banging of the doors from
nave to nave; a large broom, making a saw-like noise, began to sweep
in front of the sacristy; the church vibrated under the blows of
certain acolytes engaged in removing the dust from the famous carved
stalls in the choir; it seemed as though the Cathedral had awoke
with its nerves irritated, and that the slightest touch produced
complaints.

The men's footsteps resounded with a tremendous echo, as though the
tombs of all the kings, archbishops and warriors hidden under the
tiled floor were being disturbed.

The cold inside the church was even more intense than that outside;
this, together with the damp of its soil traversed by underground
water drains, and the leakage of subterranean and hidden tanks
that stained the pavement, made the poor canons in the choir cough