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Updated: May 19, 2025
She waited for him all day. Master Zacharius did not return. Gerande wept bitterly, but her father did not reappear. Aubert searched everywhere through the town, and soon came to the sad conviction that the old man had left it. "Let us find my father!" cried Gerande, when the young apprentice told her this sad news. "Where can he be?" Aubert asked himself.
Hold my father!" cried Gerande. But the old man had leaped across the threshold, and plunged into the night, crying, "Mine, mine, my soul!" Gerande, Aubert, and Scholastique hastened after him. They went by difficult paths, across which Master Zacharius sped like a tempest, urged by an irresistible force.
Aubert was the first apprentice whom Master Zacharius had ever admitted to the intimacy of his labours, for he appreciated his intelligence, discretion, and goodness of heart; and this young man had attached himself to Gerande with the earnest devotion natural to a noble nature. Gerande was eighteen years of age.
His memory wandered; and he took a childish interest in learning anew what had passed from his mind. Master Zacharius leaned upon his daughter; and the two heads, one white as snow and the other covered with rich golden tresses, met in the same ray of sunlight. So it came about that the old watchmaker at last perceived that he was not alone in the world.
If these wantons do not preserve a regular conduct, it is right that they should bear the consequences of their irregularity. It seems to me that they have need of reforming a little!" "What do you call faults?" asked Master Zacharius, reddening at the sarcastic tone in which these words were uttered. "Have they not a right to be proud of their origin?"
He returned to the hermitage of Notre-Dame-du-Sex, and talked so despairingly to the holy recluse, that the latter consented to return with him to the château of Andernatt. If, during these hours of anguish, Gerande had not wept, it was because her tears were exhausted. Master Zacharius had not left the hall. He ran every moment to listen to the regular beating of the old clock.
At last, late in the day, and half dead with fatigue, they reached the hermitage of Notre-Dame-du-Sex, which is situated at the base of the Dents-du-Midi, six hundred feet above the Rhone. The hermit received the three wanderers as night was falling. They could not have gone another step, and here they must needs rest. The hermit could give them no news of Master Zacharius.
I have myself been helping Master Zacharius to search for the cause of this derangement of his watches; but I have not been able to find it, and more than once I have let my tools fall from my hands in despair." "But why undertake so vain a task?" resumed Scholastique. "Is it natural that a little copper instrument should go of itself, and mark the hours? We ought to have kept to the sun-dial!"
From time immemorial Master Zacharius had never come out except at meal times, and when he went to regulate the different clocks of the town. He passed the rest of his time at his bench, which was covered with numerous clockwork instruments, most of which he had invented himself. For he was a clever man; his works were valued in all France and Germany.
That was Valentine's. The hearth, on which a fire flashed, was wide and had two mighty occupants, Rupert and Mab, the doctor's mastiffs, who took their evening ease, pillowing their huge heads upon each other's heaving bodies. The ticking clock on the mantelpiece was an imitation of the Devil Clock of Master Zacharius. There were no newspapers in the room. That fact alone made it original.
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