It had become midnight, meanwhile. As they still were so young, and
because on every Christmas eve in the excess of their joy they went to
bed very late and only after being overcome by sleep, they never had
heard the midnight tolling, and never the organ of the church when holy
mass was being celebrated, although they lived close by. At this moment
of the Holy Night, all bells were being rung, the bells of Millsdorf
were ringing, the bells of Gschaid were ringing, and behind the mountain
there was still another church whose three bells were pealing brightly.
In the distant lands outside the valley there were innumerable churches
and bells, and all of them were ringing at this moment, from village to
village the wave of sound traveled, from one village to another one
could hear the peal through the bare branches of the trees; but up to
the children there came not a sound, nothing was heard here, for nothing
was to be announced here. In the winding valleys, the lights of lanterns
gleamed along the mountain-slopes, and from many a farm came the sound
of the farm bell to rouse the hands. But far less could all this be seen
and heard up here. Only the stars gleamed and calmly twinkled and shone.
Even though Conrad kept before his mind the fate of the huntsman who was
frozen to death, and even though the children had almost emptied the
bottle of black coffee--which necessarily would bring on a corresponding
relaxation afterwards, they would not have been able to conquer their
desire for sleep, whose seductive sweetness outweighs all arguments
against it, had not nature itself in all its grandeur assisted them and
in its own depths awakened a force which was able to cope with sleep.
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