This month, we moved from a spot on the edge of this little town to one just a few steps from the heart of it.

Only then did we finally figure out that a town of 700 people has not one but two bells tolling on the hour and half hour.

And, not unlike the opening phrases of Dueling Banjos, a tune made popular in the 1972 movie Deliverance, … one clock strikes, and then the other responds.

Yes, it is confusing.

It must be hell, counting down the seconds on New Year’s Eve.

It comes down to this:

The local Catholic parish church, consecrated in 1703 and now rarely used, has a bell tower.

When we lived on the north of edge of town, maybe 500 yards from the church, we sometimes could hear its bell tolling.

Now, maybe 70 yards from the church tower, we can hear the single “bong” on the half hour and however many is necessary on the hour.

However, the church has a local competitor and, failing correction from long-time residents, we believe the second tolling bell is located mere yards from the church, on a street named Rue de la Tour de L’Horloge — which translates as “clock-tower street”.

This is the sort of rogue bell.

We cannot see the bell, for starters, but we believe it’s somewhere up there in/near the (very) old tower, the first defensive fortification in the town. The church is quite nearby, as noted, and would seem to render this second bell irrelevant.

Also, the Tour de l’Horloge seems to be running fast.

It goes off at least two minutes and 10 seconds before the church’s bell does.

And from the time pieces I have access to, including one on my screen, via Firefox, it is the church that appears to be on time, while the tower is 120 seconds early, and maybe a bit more.

Thus we deal with a sort of delayed-echo effect on every half hour. “Bong” … count to 130 or so … and an equal number of corrective “bongs” from the church.

The one upside to this is, if you actually were depending on the church bell to order your day — and in this part of the world the vineyard workers apparently set their work day by it — you get a couple of chances to count off the numerous bells ahead of noon and midnight.

(And yes, both bells ring through the night.)

“Hmm, was that 10 or was it 11?”

“Hang on a bit, you can count the next set of peals and be sure.”

An outsider might think that, eventually, one or the other bell would be silenced, presumably the clock-tower bell, because it appears to be running two minutes-plus fast.

Or, at least, they would be brought into accord, saving the town from dueling bells, and improving your chances of sleeping through the night.