Having explored the crypt, we prepared to mount the endless winding stairs, whose final termination is the ball under the cross that surmounts the whole. Our ambition aimed only at the bell beneath the ball. We paid an occasional sixpence for the privilege of peeping into the library,--a most tidy and put-to-rights room, with a floor of wood patchwork,--and for the right to look down upon the geometrical staircase which winds around and clings to the wall upon one side, but is without any visible support upon the other. The "whispering gallery" was reached after a time. It is the encircling cornice within the dome, surrounded by a railing, and forming a narrow gallery. "I will remain here," said the guide, "while you pass around until you are exactly opposite; wait there until I whisper." Had we possessed the spirit of Casabianca, we should at this moment be sitting upon that narrow bench against the wall, with our feet upon the gas-pipes. We waited and listened, and listened and waited; but the sound of the blows from the hammers below reverberated like thunder around us. We could not have heard the crack of doom. Becoming conscious, after a time, that our guide had disappeared, we came out and continued our ascent. Mrs. K.'s curiosity, if not satisfied, was at least quenched, and she refused to go farther. My aspirations still pointed upward. There was another sixpence, another dizzy mount of dark, twisting stairs, with strength, ambition, and even curiosity gradually left behind, and with only one blind instinct remaining--to go on. There was a long, dingy passage, through which ghostly forms were flitting; there were more stairs, with twists and turns, forgotten now with other torments; there was the mounting of half a dozen rickety wooden steps at last, for no object but to descend shakily upon the other side, and then we found ourselves in a little dark corner, peering over a dingy rail, with a great, dusky object filling all the space below. And that was the bell! "Well, and what of it?" I don't know; but we saw it!
The wedding party.--The canals.--New Haven.--Around the tea-table.--Separating the sheep from the goats.--"Will it be a rough passage?"--Gymnastic feats of the little steamer.--O, what were officers to us?--"Who ever invented earrings!"--Dieppe.--Fish-wives.--Train for Paris.--Fellow-passengers.--Rouen.--Babel.--Deliverance.