But she still liked the bells best.
By that you may know that her love was strong, for to all the others it was torture to hear those bells, that would not stop ringing. No one asked about them during the first half-hour. During the first half-hour people hardly heard any ringing, but during the second and the third!!!
No one need believe that San Pasquale’s little bells could not make themselves heard. They are always loud and their clang seemed now to grow and grow. It soon sounded as if the fog were filled with bells; as if the sky hung full of them, although no one could see them for the clouds.
When Donna Elisa first heard the ringing she thought that it was San Giuseppe’s little bell, and then that it was the bell of the Cathedral itself. Then she thought she heard the bell of the Dominican monastery chime in, and at last she was certain that all the bells in the town rang and rang all they could, all the bells in the five monasteries and the seven churches. She thought that she recognized them all, until finally she asked, and heard that it was only San Pasquale’s little bells that were ringing.
During the first hours, and before people generally knew that the bells were ringing all by themselves, they noticed that the raindrops fell in time to the sound of the bells, and that every one spoke with a metallic voice. People also noticed that it was impossible to play on mandolin and guitar, because the bells blended with the music and made it ear-splitting; neither could any one read, because the letters swung to and fro like bell-clappers, and the words acquired a voice, and read themselves out quite audibly.
Soon the people could not bear to see flowers on long stalks, because they thought that they swung to and fro. And they complained that sound came from them, instead of fragrance.
Others insisted that the mist floating through the air moved in time with the sound of the bells, and they said that all the pendulums conformed to it, and that every one who went by in the rain tried to do likewise.
And that was when the bells had only rung a couple of hours, and when the people still laughed at them.
But at the third hour the ringing seemed to increase even more, and then some stuffed cotton into their ears, while others buried themselves under pillows. But they felt just as distinctly how the air quivered with the strokes, and they thought that they perceived how everything moved in time. Those who fled up to the dark attic found the sound of the bells clear and ringing there, as if they came from the sky; and those who fled down into the cellar heard them as loud and deafening there as if San Pasquale’s church stood under ground.
Every one in Diamante began to be terrified except Donna Micaela, whom love protected from fear.