I wandered for several hours through the most remote and deserted parts of the city, rapt in a thousand confused imaginings; and, contrary to my custom, with a gaze all vague and lost in space, nor could my attention be aroused by any playful detail of architecture, by any monument of an unknown style, by any marvellous and hidden work of sculpture, by any one, in short, of those rare features for whose minute examination I had been wont to pause at every step, at times when only artistic and antiquarian interests held sway in my mind.
The sky was continually growing darker; the wind was blowing more strongly and more boisterously; and a fine sleet had begun to fall, very keen and penetrating, when unwittingly,—for I was still ignorant of the way—and as if borne thither by an impulse which I could not resist, an impulse whose occult force had brought me to the spot whither my thoughts were tending, I found myself in the lonely square which my readers already know.
On finding myself in that place I sprang to clear consciousness from out the depths of that lethargy in which I had been sunken, as if awakened from profound slumber by a violent shock.
I looked about me. All was as I described it—nay, it was more dreary. I know not whether this gloom was due to the darkness of the sky, the lack of verdure, or the state of my own spirit, but the truth is that between the feeling with which I first contemplated that spot and this later impression there was all the distance which lies between poetic melancholy and personal bitterness.
For some moments I stood gazing at the sombre convent, now more sombre than ever to my eyes, and I was already on the point of withdrawing when my ears were wounded by the sound of a bell, a bell of broken, husky voice, which was tolling slowly, while in vivid contrast it was accompanied by something like a little clapper-bell which suddenly began to revolve with the rapidity of a ringing so sharp and so incessant that it seemed to have been seized by an attack of vertigo.
Nothing was ever stranger than that edifice, whose black silhouette was outlined against the sky like that of a cliff bristling with thousands of freakish points, speaking with tongues of bronze through bells that seemed moved by the touch of invisible powers, the one weeping with smothered sobs, the other laughing with shrill, wild outcry, like the laughter of a madwoman.
At intervals and confused with the bewildering clamor of the bells, I seemed to hear, too, something like the indistinct notes of an organ and the words of a sacred, solemn chant.
I changed my intention; and instead of departing I approached the door of the church and asked one of the ragged beggars squatted on the stone steps:
“What is going on here?”
“A taking of the veil,” the mendicant answered, interrupting the prayer which he was muttering between his teeth to resume it later, although not until he had kissed the bit of copper that I dropped into his hand as I put my question.