In truth, Maese Pérez, pale and disfigured, was entering the church, carried in an armchair, which everybody claimed the honor of bearing upon his shoulders. Neither the doctor's commands nor his daughter's tears had been able to keep him in bed. "No," he had said; "this is the last--the last--I know it. I will not die without hearing the voice of my organ again, on this solemn night, this good-night. Come, I implore, I command you, let us go to the church!" His desire was gratified. The people carried him in their arms to the organ-loft. Mass began. The cathedral clock struck twelve. After the introit came the Gospel, the offertory, then the solemn moment when the priest, after having consecrated the bread, takes the Sacred Form between his fingers and begins to elevate it. A cloud of incense in bluish waves floated through the church. The little altar-bells began to ring in vibrating peals, and Maese Pérez laid his aged fingers upon the keys of the organ. The multitudinous voices of its metal pipes resounded in a prolonged and majestic chord, which grew gradually fainter, as though the breath of the wind had borne away its last echoes. The first chord, which seemed like a voice from the earth calling out to heaven, was answered by another, that seemed to come from a great distance, soft at first, then swelling until it became a torrent of thundering harmony. It was the voice of the angels, which had traversed space and reached the earth. Then followed what seemed like canticles sung far away by the hierarchies of seraphim, a thousand hymns at once blending into one, which itself was no more than an accompaniment for a strange melody that floated upon that ocean of mysterious echoes as a mist floats over the waves of the sea. Then various chants dropped out of the harmony, leaving two voices which finally melted into each other; and this last isolated voice lingered long, sustaining a note as brilliant as a thread of light. The priest bent his brow, and above his white head, through the blue gauzes of the incense, he held up the Host to the eyes of the faithful. At that moment the tremulous note that Maese Pérez held swelled and swelled until an immense explosion of joyous harmony filled the church. In the far-off corners of the temple the air seemed to buzz, and the jewel-windows quivered in their tight frames. Each one of the notes which formed the mighty chord developed a theme of its own, some near, some far, some brilliant, some muffled. It seemed as though the waters and the birds, the breezes and the forests, heaven and earth, were each in its own tongue singing the birth of the Saviour.