Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. When next morning, about seven o'clock, I entered M. Goulden's chamber, to set myself to work, he was still in bed and very dejected. Joseph, he said to me, I am not well; all these dreadful stories have made me ill: I have not slept. Shall I make you some tea ? I asked. No, my boy, no; only make up the fire a little. I shall get up presently. But this is the hour for setting all the clocks in the town: it's Monday, you know. But I can't go; for to see so many good people in such misery would do for me quite. So, Joseph, take the keys hanging there behind the door, and go: that will be best; and if I could sleep an hour or two, it would do me good. So I put wood on the fire, took mantle and mufHers, and went out with the keys. I was certainly sorry for Father Melchior's being ill, but was consoled by thisidea? I shall get up to the top of the bell-tower, and see from there Catherine's house. Thus thinking, I arrived at Brainstein's, the bell- ringer, who lived in an old tumble-down shed at the corner of the small Place: his two sons were weavers, and from morning till night might be heard in this hole the creaking of looms and whistling of shuttles. The grandmother, so old that her eyes were no longer to be seen, slept in an old armchair, on the top of which perched a magpie. Old Brainstein, when he had no bells to ring for a christening, a burial, or a marriage, read his almanack behind the little round window-panes. I arrived then at Brainstein's, and old Brainstein, rising and saluting me, put on his old jacket and woollen cap, driving away the cat who was sleeping on them; lie took his great key and we went out. I was happy, in spite of the cold, to be in the open air, for all was murky with steam in this hole, and one could b...