Meanwhile all was not silent within Semur.  The Cathedral bells rang often, at first filling us with hope, for how familiar was that sound!  The first time, we all gathered together and listened, and many wept.  It was as if we heard our mother’s voice.  M. de Bois-Sombre burst into tears.  I have never seen him within the doors of the Cathedral since his marriage; but he burst into tears. ‘Mon Dieu! if I were but there!’ he said.  We stood and listened, our hearts melting, some falling on their knees.  M. le Cure stood up in the midst of us and began to intone the psalm:  [He has a beautiful voice.  It is sympathetic, it goes to the heart.] ‘I was glad when they said to me, Let us go up—­’ And though there were few of us who could have supposed themselves capable of listening to that sentiment a little while before with any sympathy, yet a vague hope rose up within us while we heard him, while we listened to the bells.  What man is there to whom the bells of his village, the carillon of his city, is not most dear?  It rings for him through all his life; it is the first sound of home in the distance when he comes back—­the last that follows him like a long farewell when he goes away.  While we listened, we forgot our fears.  They were as we were, they were also our brethren, who rang those bells.  We seemed to see them trooping into our beautiful Cathedral.  All! only to see it again, to be within its shelter, cool and calm as in our mother’s arms!  It seemed to us that we should wish for nothing more.

When the sound ceased we looked into each other’s faces, and each man saw that his neighbour was pale.  Hope died in us when the sound died away, vibrating sadly through the air.  Some men threw themselves on the ground in their despair.

And from this time forward many voices were heard, calls and shouts within the walls, and sometimes a sound like a trumpet, and other instruments of music.  We thought, indeed, that noises as of bands patrolling along the ramparts were audible as our patrols worked their way round and round.  This was a duty which I never allowed to be neglected, not because I put very much faith in it, but because it gave us a sort of employment.  There is a story somewhere which I recollect dimly of an ancient city which its assailants did not touch, but only marched round and round till the walls fell, and they could enter.  Whether this was a story of classic times or out of our own remote history, I could not recollect.  But I thought of it many times while we made our way like a procession of ghosts, round and round, straining our ears to hear what those voices were which sounded above us, in tones that were familiar, yet so strange.  This story got so much into my head (and after a time all our heads seemed to get confused and full of wild and bewildering expedients) that I found myself suggesting—­I, a man known for sense and reason—­that we should blow trumpets at some time to be fixed, which