About three o'clock Monsieur Goulden retired, and a few minutes after, through God's grace, I fell asleep.
IV
When I arose in the morning, about seven, I went to Monsieur Goulden's room to begin work, but he was still in bed, looking weary and sick.
"Joseph," said he, "I am not well. This horrible news has made me ill, and I have not slept at all."
"Shall I not make you some tea?" I asked.
"No, my child, that is not worth while. I will get up by and by. But this is the day to regulate the city clocks; I cannot go; for to see so many good people—people I have known for thirty years—in misery, would kill me. Listen, Joseph: take those keys hanging behind the door and go. I will try to sleep a little. If I could sleep an hour or two, it would do me good."
"Very well, Monsieur Goulden," I replied; "I will go at once."
After putting more wood in the stove, I took the cloak and mittens, drew Monsieur Goulden's bed-curtains, and went out, the bunch of keys in my pocket. The illness of Father Melchior grieved me very much for a while, but a thought came to console me, and I said to myself: "You can climb up the city clock-tower, and see the house of Catharine and Aunt Grédel." Thinking thus, I arrived at the house of Brainstein, the bell-ringer, who lived at the corner of the little place, in an old, tumble-down barrack. His two sons were weavers, and in their old home the noise of the loom and the whistle of the shuttle was heard from morning till night. The grandmother, old and blind, slept in an armchair, on the back of which perched a magpie. Father Brainstein, when he did not have to ring the bells for a christening, a funeral, or a marriage, kept reading his almanac behind the small round panes of his window.
Beside their hut was a little box under the roof of the old hall, where the cobbler Koniam worked, and farther on were the butchers' and fruiterers' shops.