of metal which they rule.  They are lost in a trance of what approximates to dervish passion—­so thrilling is the surge of sound, so potent are the rhythms they obey.  Men come and tug them by the heels.  One grasps the starting thews upon their calves.  Another is impatient for their place.  But they strain still, locked together, and forgetful of the world.  At length they have enough:  then slowly, clingingly unclasp, turn round with gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into the diurnal round of common life.  Another pair is in their room upon the beam.

The Englishman who saw these things stood looking up, enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk.  One candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall.  And when his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the swinging bell.  Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he ascribed too much of feeling to the men he watched.  But no, that was impossible.  There are emotions deeply seated in the joy of exercise, when the body is brought into play, and masses move in concert, of which the subject is but half conscious.  Music and dance, and the delirium of battle or the chase, act thus upon spontaneous natures.  The mystery of rhythm and associated energy and blood tingling in sympathy is here.  It lies at the root of man’s most tyrannous instinctive impulses.

It was past one when we reached home, and now a meditative man might well have gone to bed.  But no one thinks of sleeping on Sylvester Abend.  So there followed bowls of punch in one friend’s room, where English, French, and Germans blent together in convivial Babel; and flasks of old Montagner in another.  Palmy, at this period, wore an archdeacon’s hat, and smoked a churchwarden’s pipe; and neither were his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the association.  Late in the morning we must sally forth, they said, and roam the town.  For it is the custom here on New Year’s night to greet acquaintances, and ask for hospitality, and no one may deny these self-invited guests.  We turned out again into the grey snow-swept gloom, a curious Comus—­not at all like Greeks, for we had neither torches in our hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a lady’s door-posts.  And yet I could not refrain, at this supreme moment of jollity, in the zero temperature, amid my Grisons friends, from humming to myself verses from the Greek Anthology:—­

  The die is cast!  Nay, light the torch! 
  I’ll take the road!  Up, courage, ho! 
  Why linger pondering in the porch? 
  Upon Love’s revel we will go!

  Shake off those fumes of wine!  Hang care
  And caution!  What has Love to do
  With prudence?  Let the torches flare! 
  Quick, drown the doubts that hampered you!

  Cast weary wisdom to the wind! 
  One thing, but one alone, I know: 
  Love bent e’en Jove and made him blind
  Upon Love’s revel we will go!