It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to
meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was
explained.
Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get up
gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never grows easy
or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is something to have found
but one act aloof from habit. It is not merely that the friars overcome
the habit of sleep. The subtler point is that they can never acquire the
habit of sacrificing sleep. What art, what literature, or what life but
would gain a secret security by such a point of perpetual freshness and
perpetual initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a
will that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done,
and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's.
The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of the
French fields, and the hour of night--_l'ora di notte_--which rings
with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the Adriatic
littoral, when the latest light is passing.
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