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