They are used to consummate infamous acts.
Listen," and Des Hermies took from the bell-ringers bookshelf the fifth volume of the _Mystik_ of Goerres.

"Here is the flower of them all: "'These priests, in their baseness, often go so far as to celebrate the mass with great hosts which then they cut through the middle and afterwards glue to a parchment, similarly cloven, and use abominably to satisfy their passions.'" "Holy sodomy, in other words ?" "Exactly." At this moment the bell, set in motion in the tower, boomed out.

The chamber in which Durtal and Des Hermies were sitting trembled and a droning filled the air.

It seemed that waves of sound came out of the walls, unrolling in a spiral from the very rock, and that one was transported, in a dream, into the inside of one of these shells which, when held up to the ear, simulate the roar of rolling billows.

Des Hermies, accustomed to the mighty resonance of the bells at short range, thought only of the coffee, which he had put on the stove to keep hot.
Then the booming of the bell came more slowly.