Yes, truly! It is
wholesome up here,--the sky seems very near, and the sculptured
beasts do no harm. But down in the streets one feels and smells the
dirt and danger directly. I sit here all by myself for hours
thinking, when no one comes to visit the tower,--for sometimes a
whole day passes and no one wishes to ascend. And there is a moral
in that, Monseigneur, if one has eyes to see it;--days pass, years,
in the world,--and no one wishes to ascend!--to Heaven, I mean!--to
go down to Hell is delightful, and everyone is ready for it! It is
at night that the platform here is most beautiful,--oh yes, at night
it is very fine, Monseigneur!--but it is only madmen and dreamers
who call me up in the night hours, yet when they do I never refuse
to go with them, for look you, I am a light sleeper and have no wife
to bid me keep my bed. Yes,--if the authorities knew that I took
anybody up to the tower at night they would probably dismiss me,"
and he chuckled like an old schoolboy with a sense of his own innate
mischief and disobedience, "But you see they do not know! And I
learn a great deal from the strange persons who come at night,--much
more than from the strange persons who come by day. Now, the last so
strange person that came here by night--you would not perhaps
believe it, Monseigneur, but it was a priest! Yes," and the old
fellow laughed, "a priest who had suddenly found out that the Church
was not following its Master! Yes, yes! .
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