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Updated: May 1, 2025
Life seemed only to still exist on the surface of his body, like the last whiffs of smoke about a lamp just extinguished. When he came to his senses, Aubert and Gerande were leaning over him. In these last moments the future took in his eyes the shape of the present. He saw his daughter alone, without a protector. "My son," said he to Aubert, "I give my daughter to thee."
So your servant here desires to give you the method of controlling these rebellious watches." "What is it? what is it?" cried Master Zacharius. "You shall know on the day after that on which you have given me your daughter's hand." "My Gerande?" "Herself!" "My daughter's heart is not free," replied Master Zacharius, who seemed neither astonished nor shocked at the strange demand. "Bah!
He scarcely answered the sweet words of Gerande, who evidently noticed her father's silence, and even the clatter of Scholastique herself no more struck his ear than the roar of the river, to which he paid no attention. After the silent meal, the old clockmaker left the table without embracing his daughter, or saying his usual "Good-night" to all.
Master Zacharius looked sublime in this hallucination, which carried him to the ultimate mysteries of the Infinite. But his daughter Gerande, standing on the threshold of the door, had heard all. She rushed into her father's arms, and he pressed her convulsively to his breast. "What is the matter with thee, my daughter?" he asked.
Time was, when he had accompanied Gerande to church, and had seemed to find in prayer the intellectual charm which it imparts to thoughtful minds, since it is the most sublime exercise of the imagination. This voluntary neglect of holy practices, added to the secret habits of his life, had in some sort confirmed the accusations levelled against his labours.
They could scarcely hope to find him still living amid these sad solitudes. The night was dark, the wind howled amid the mountains, and the avalanches roared down from the summits of the broken crags. Aubert and Gerande, crouching before the hermit's hearth, told him their melancholy tale.
Meanwhile, thanks to the constant and tender care of Gerande and Aubert, his strength seemed to return a little; and in the tranquillity in which his convalescence left him, he succeeded in detaching himself from the thoughts which had absorbed him. As soon as he could walk, his daughter lured him away from the house, which was still besieged with dissatisfied customers.
After these words Master Zacharius fell into complete silence, till he knocked at the door of his house, and for the first time since his convalescence descended to his shop, while Gerande sadly repaired to her chamber. Just as Master Zacharius crossed the threshold of his shop, one of the many clocks suspended on the wall struck five o'clock.
"You will not talk thus, Scholastique," said Aubert, "when you learn that the sun-dial was invented by Cain. "Good heavens! what are you telling me?" "Do you think," asked Gerande simply, "that we might pray to God to give life to my father's watches?" "Without doubt," replied Aubert. "Good!
She led a mystical existence in Geneva, which had not as yet been delivered over to the dryness of Calvinism. While, night and morning, she read her Latin prayers in her iron-clasped missal, Gerande had also discovered a hidden sentiment in Aubert Thun's heart, and comprehended what a profound devotion the young workman had for her.
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