Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/115

Rh from amid the mournful silence. At the sound he shook his head, then put his hands over his face, which became gradually overspread with a deadly pallor. At last he took me by the hand, and, interrupting me in the midst of my explanation, cried, "Don't you hear that bell?"

"Yes," I replied. "And, if I am not deceived, it is the sound of the passing-bell in the convent of the Bernardines."

"In the convent of the Bernardines!" he repeated, in a strangely altered tone; "in the convent of the Bernardines, do you say?"

"Assuredly. I recognize the direction of the sound; I can not be wrong."

"Let us descend immediately, for the sound drives me mad."

"Why descend? Is the light of the moon not better than those smoky lamps in the hell we have just quitted?"

The licentiate made no reply for a long time. The bell, whose strokes became more and more distinct, exercised upon him a kind of influence quite inexplicable. I can not tell whether Don Tadeo remarked my surprise, but he probably relieved his bursting heart by taking my hand, and letting escape, in the midst of stifled sobbing, these strange words:

"You must listen to me. I never hear the peal of that bell without seeing, as in a bad dream, the saddest event in my life rise before my eyes. Nothing in me will more excite your astonishment when you are acquainted with the horrible occurrence of which that bell reminds me."

I made him aware, by signs, that I was ready to listen to him. This is the story he told me, with a