It all looked like an ocean, a world, magnified by the
darkness, the cold, and their own secret fears. At first the gentlemen
could neither hear nor see anything. The quiver of light and of distant
sound blinded their eyes and confused their ears. Granoux, though he
was not naturally poetic, was struck by the calm serenity of that winter
night, and murmured: "What a beautiful night, gentlemen!"
"Roudier was certainly dreaming," exclaimed Rougon, rather disdainfully.
But the marquis, whose ears were quick, had begun to listen. "Ah!" he
observed in his clear voice, "I hear the tocsin."
At this they all leant over the parapet, holding their breath. And light
and pure as crystal the distant tolling of a bell rose from the plain.
The gentlemen could not deny it. It was indeed the tocsin. Rougon
pretended that he recognised the bell of Beage, a village fully a league
from Plassans. This he said in order to reassure his colleagues.
But the marquis interrupted him. "Listen, listen: this time it is the
bell of Saint-Maur." And he indicated another point of the horizon to
them. There was, in fact, a second bell wailing through the clear night.
And very soon there were ten bells, twenty bells, whose despairing
tollings were detected by their ears, which had by this time grown
accustomed to the quivering of the darkness. Ominous calls rose from all
sides, like the faint rattles of dying men. Soon the whole plain seemed
to be wailing.
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