saw it from below it appeared about the size
of a fly.

These vaultings caused Gabriel a strange impression; no one could
guess the existence of such a place in the upper regions of the
building. He would walk through the forest of worm-eaten posts which
supported the roof, through narrow passages between the cupolas of the
vaulting that arose from the flooring like white and dusty tumours;
sometimes there would be a shaft through which he could see down into
the Cathedral, the depth of which made him giddy. These shafts were
like narrow well-mouths at the bottom of which could be seen people
walking like ants on the tile flooring of the church. Through these
shafts were lowered the ropes of the great chandeliers, and the golden
chains that supported the figure of Christ above the railing of the
high altar. Enormous capstans showed through the twilight their cogged
and rusty wheels, their levers and ropes like forgotten instruments
of torture. This was the hidden machinery belonging to the great
religious festivals; by these artifices the magnificent canopy of the
holy week was raised and fastened.

As the sun's rays shone in between the wooden posts the dust of ages
that lay like a thick mantel on the roof of the vaulting would rise
and dance in them for a few seconds, and the huge old spiders' webs
would wave like fans in the wind, while the footsteps of the intruders
would occasion wild and precipitous scrambles of rats from all the
dark corners. In the furthest and darkest corners roosted those black
birds who by night flew down into the church through the shafts in
the vaulting, and the eyes of the owls glowed with phosphorescent
brilliancy, while the bats flew sleepily about sweeping the faces of
the lads with their wings.

The bell-ringer's son would examine the deposits dropped in the dust,
and would enumerate all the different birds who took refuge in the
summit of the mountains of stone: this belonged to the hooting owl,
and that to the red owl, and this again to the raven, and he spoke
with respect of a certain nest of eagles that his father had seen as a
young man, fierce birds who had endeavoured to tear out his eyes,
and who had so thoroughly frightened him that he had been obliged to
borrow the gun belonging to the night watchers on each occasion that
his duties took him to the roof.

Gabriel loved that strange world, harbouring above the Cathedral with
its silence and its imposing solitude. It was