The second, a little smaller, that (according to Ambrose) had been christened Paul, took up the strain with livelier and more high-pitched tones, ringing long and clangorously, in ecstasies of joy, like a maiden in the glow of love on a spring day, who runs out afield and, darting through the rye, sings from a full bosom to the winds, to the lands, to the clear sky, and to her own joyful heart. And the third, the _Sygnaturka_, which announces that Mass begins, poured out its notes, like a bird, doing all that it could (though in vain) to outvie the other two with a hurried babbling tinkle. All three, sounding together, formed a grand orchestra—a roaring bassoon, a warbling violin, and a jingling cymbal, with shrill quivering notes: their music was very solemn and very pleasant to the ear. It was the day of the local Feast—Saint Peter and Paul—and it was for this that they called the people so joyfully. In the bright dazzling sunshine and the burning heat, the dealers had ever since dawn been setting up their shady booths, and the tables and counters beneath them, on the large open space in front of the church. And no sooner had the bells sent their merry peals over the country-side than all sorts of vehicles came rolling in through clouds of dust from as far as the eye could reach, with great crowds of people on foot. All the roads, lanes and field-paths were red with women’s dresses or white with men’s capotes. Still from the brazen throats of those bells did the notes pour forth, and they rolled sunward their chants and their loud invocations: “_Kyrie!—Kyrie!—Kyrie eleison!_” “Madonna!—Madonna!—Most holy Madonna!” “To Thee, O God!—To Thee I cry—I cry—I cry aloud!” All the huts were decorated with greenery; and in the whole aspect of the village, on this noted day of high solemnity, there was an atmosphere that lifted up the heart and filled it with rapture. Every thoroughfare was soon encumbered with foot-passengers, horses and wagons: the travellers within these gazing about them in wonder at the scenery, so beautifully adorned by nature for so great a festival. All the landscape was given over to an inundation of wild flowers. Along every pathway there reigned a wonderful profusion of soft white and gold and violet hues. The larkspur and the convolvulus put their perfumed heads forth from their hiding-places in the cornfields: bluebells and cornflowers were seen in every patch, and the hollows where water had been now teemed with forget-me-nots, making the dells look like bits of blue, fallen from the sky. There were clumps of vetches without end, buttercups and dandelions innumerable, and the purple flowers of the thistle and clover, and daisies with camomiles—and countless others, of which only our Lord knows the names, since they were blooming for Him alone. And as sweet a perfume came up out of the fields as when his Reverence in church offers incense to the Holy Sacrament!