William Gaddis, The Recognitions, pp. 838:
There was silence. The shadows on the screen moved, and then Father Martin’s voice took up, a monody hardly breaking the reciprocal sounds which bound the ship in motion, no more pressing or importunate, and no more faltering than the movement of the ship itself into the darkness. Bells sounded somewhere, clear tones which penetrated the misereatur, hard separate sounds which signaled the Latin syllables with consequence: Stanley was counting them.
1.In the Roman Catholic and other Latin liturgies, the first part of the public form of absolution, following the Confiteor in the mass. It is also used at prime and complin, and, with the singular pronoun (tui), in sacramental absolution.
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 