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He lay gazing on the portrait with almost as much awe as he had gazed on the ghostly original, until the shrill house-clock warned him of the lateness of the hour. He put out the light; but remained for a long time turning over these curious circumstances and coincidences in his mind, until he fell asleep. His dreams partook of the nature of his waking thoughts.
That evening, alone in his chamber, by the glimmer of a little lamp, Rodin sat plunged in a sort of ecstatic contemplation, before the print representing Sixtus V. The great house-clock struck twelve. At the last stroke, Rodin drew himself up in all the savage majesty of his infernal triumph, and exclaimed: "This is the first of June. There are no more Renneponts!
An air of sunshiny peace was over the place, and as the upper-half of the side-door stood open he tied his horse and went in. The ticking of the tall house-clock was the only sound he heard at first, but as he stood irresolute, a sweet, thin voice in an adjoining room began to sing a hymn. "Grandmother!
You might imagine that the dwellers in front had become rich through trade, for they suffered no more from the perpetual booming of the great house-clock above their heads, or from the ever-moving pendulum which pulsated like a living thing in their midst, than a manufacturer from the constant sound of his busy steam-engines and rattling machinery.
At Whitsuntide, this year, the Huberts had taken Angelique with them to lunch at the ruins of the Chateau d'Hautecoeur, which overlooks the Ligneul, two leagues below Beaumont; and, after the day spent in running and laughing in the open air, the young girl still slept when, the next morning, the old house-clock struck eight. Hubertine was obliged to go up and rap at her door. "Ah, well!
That evening, alone in his chamber, by the glimmer of a little lamp, Rodin sat plunged in a sort of ecstatic contemplation, before the print representing Sixtus V. The great house-clock struck twelve. At the last stroke, Rodin drew himself up in all the savage majesty of his infernal triumph, and exclaimed: "This is the first of June. There are no more Renneponts!
Thus he sat for above an hour, then he heaped fresh logs upon the hearth, looked again to his revolvers, and retired to rest. The house-clock was striking twelve as the Colonel awoke.
I have heard a man exclaim, after contemplating the structure and uses of a house-clock, "Is it not fitting that such as we should be slaves to people who have the ingenuity to invent, and the skill to construct, so wonderful a machine as this?" "The sun," he added, "is a machine of this nature." "But who winds it up?" said his companion. "Who but Allah," he replied.
The experiments in the present instance came to no result; they that sowed the hemp-seed forgot the magic rhyme that they were to pronounce, so the true lover never appeared; and as to the dumb-cake, what between the awful stillness they had to keep, and the awfulness of the midnight hour, their hearts failed them when they had put the cake in the pan, so that, on the striking of the great house-clock in the servants' hall, they were seized with a sudden panic, and ran out of the room, to which they did not return until morning, when they found the mystic cake burnt to a cinder.
As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life, on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year, as certain as ever the Sunday-night came, to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands: And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of, he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.
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