these stairs, ascending and descending, moved other than angels—­the friezejacketed Buerschen, Grisons bears, rejoicing in their exercise, exhilarated with the tingling noise of beaten metal.  We reached the first room safely, guided by firm-footed Christian, whose one candle just defined the rough walls and the slippery steps.  There we found a band of boys, pulling ropes that set the bells in motion.  But our destination was not reached.  One more aerial ladder, perpendicular in darkness, brought us swiftly to the home of sound.  It is a small square chamber, where the bells are hung, filled with the interlacement of enormous beams, and pierced to north and south by open windows, from whose parapets I saw the village and the valley spread beneath.  The fierce wind hurried through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space was thronged with men.  Men on the platform, men on the window-sills, men grappling the bells with iron arms, men brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing, recrossing, shouldering their mates, drinking red wine from gigantic beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and yelling in corybantic chorus.  They yelled and shouted, one could see it by their open mouths and glittering eyes; but not a sound from human lungs could reach our ears.  The overwhelming incessant thunder of the bells drowned all.  It thrilled the tympanum, ran through the marrow of the spine, vibrated in the inmost entrails.  Yet the brain was only steadied and excited by this sea of brazen noise.  After a few moments I knew the place and felt at home in it.  Then I enjoyed a spectacle which sculptors might have envied.  For they ring the bells in Davos after this fashion:—­The lads below set them going with ropes.  The men above climb in pairs on ladders to the beams from which they are suspended.  Two mighty pine-trees, roughly squared and built into the walls, extend from side to side across the belfry.  Another from which the bells hang, connects these massive trunks at right angles.  Just where the central beam is wedged into the two parallel supports, the ladders reach them from each side of the belfry, so that, bending from the higher rung of the ladder, and leaning over, stayed upon the lateral beam, each pair of men can keep one bell in movement with their hands.  Each comrade plants one leg upon the ladder, and sets the other knee firmly athwart the horizontal pine.  Then round each other’s waist they twine left arm and right.  The two have thus become one man.  Right arm and left are free to grasp the bell’s horns, sprouting at its crest beneath the beam.  With a grave rhythmic motion, bending sideward in a close embrace, swaying and returning to their centre from the well-knit loins, they drive the force of each strong muscle into the vexed bell.  The impact is earnest at first, but soon it becomes frantic.  The men take something from each other of exalted enthusiasm.  This efflux of their combined energies inspires them and exasperates the mighty resonance