The Eternal Adam and other stories (10 page)

Finding Gerande absorbed in a melancholy
silence, Scholastique left her old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a
candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her
niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting
Madonna of the domestic hearth, and to beg her kindly watchfulness during the
coming night; but on this evening Gerande remained silent in her seat.

‘Well, well, dear demoiselle,’ said the
astonished Scholastique, ‘supper is over, and it is time to go to bed. Why do
you tire your eyes by sitting up late? Ah, Holy Virgin! It’s much better to
sleep, and to get a little comfort from happy dreams! In these detestable times
in which we live, who can promise herself a fortunate day?’

‘Ought we not to send for a doctor for my
father?’ asked Gerande.

‘A doctor!’ cried the old domestic. ‘Has
Master Zacharius ever listened to their fancies and pompous sayings? He might
accept medicines for the watches, but not for the body!’

‘What shall we do?’ murmured Gerande. ‘Has
he gone to work, or to rest?’

‘Gerande,’ answered Aubert softly, ‘some
mental trouble annoys your father, that is all.’

‘Do you know what it is, Aubert?’

‘Perhaps, Gerande.’

‘Tell us, then,’ cried Scholastique
eagerly, economically extinguishing her taper.

‘For several days, Gerande,’ said the young
apprentice, ‘something absolutely incomprehensible has been going on. All the
watches which your father has made and sold for some years have suddenly
stopped. Very many of them have been brought back to him. He has carefully
taken them to pieces; the springs were in good condition, and the wheels well
set. He has put them together yet more carefully; but, despite his skill, they
will not go.’

‘The devil’s in it!’ cried Scholastique.

‘Why say you so?’ asked Gerande. ‘It seems
very natural to me. Nothing lasts for ever in this world. The infinite cannot
be fashioned by the hands of men.’

‘It is none the less true,’ returned
Aubert, ‘that there is in this something very mysterious and extraordinary. 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!’

‘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! They will be useless prayers,’
muttered the old servant, ‘but Heaven will pardon them for their good intent.’

The taper was relighted. Scholastique.
Gerande, and Aubert knelt down together upon the tiles of the room. The young
girl prayed for her mother’s soul, for a blessing for the night, for travellers
and prisoners, for the good and the wicked, and more earnestly than all for the
unknown misfortunes of her father.

Then the three devout souls rose with some
confidence in their hearts, because they had laid their sorrow on the bosom of
God.

Aubert repaired to his own room; Gerande
sat pensively by the window, whilst the last lights were disappearing from the
city streets; and Scholastique, having poured a little water on the flickering
embers, and shut the two enormous bolts on the door, threw herself upon her
bed, where she was soon dreaming that she was dying of fright.

Meanwhile the terrors of this winter’s
night had increased. Sometimes, with the whirlpools of the river, the wind
engulfed itself among the piles, and the whole house shivered and shook; but
the young girl, absorbed in her sadness, thought only of her father. After
hearing what Aubert told her, the malady of Master Zacharius took fantastic
proportions in her mind; and it seemed to her as if his existence, so dear to
her, having become purely mechanical, no longer moved on its worn-out pivots
without effort.

Suddenly the penthouse shutter, shaken by
the squall, struck against the window of the room. Gerande shuddered and
started up without understanding the cause of the noise which thus disturbed
her reverie. When she became a little calmer she opened the sash. The clouds
had burst, and a torrent-like rain pattered on the surrounding roofs. The young
girl leaned out of the window to draw to the shutter shaken by the wind, but
she feared to do so. It seemed to her that the rain and the river, confounding
their tumultuous waters, were submerging the frail house, the planks of which
creaked in every direction. She would have flown from her chamber, but she saw
below the flickering of a light which appeared to come from Master Zacharius’s
retreat, and in one of those momentary calms during which the elements keep a
sudden silence, her ear caught plaintive sounds. She tried to shut her window,
but could not. The wind violently repelled her, like a thief who was breaking
into a dwelling.

Gerande thought she would go mad with
terror. What was her father doing? She opened the door, and it escaped from her
hands, and slammed loudly with the force of the tempest. Gerande then found
herself in the dark supper-room, succeeded in gaining, on tiptoe, the staircase
which led to her father’s shop, and pale and fainting, glided down.

The old watchmaker was upright in the
middle of the room, which resounded with the roaring of the river. His
bristling hair gave him a sinister aspect. He was talking and gesticulating,
without seeing or hearing anything. Gerande stood still on the threshold.

‘It is death!’ said Master Zacharius, in a
hollow voice; ‘it is death! Why should I live longer, now that I have dispersed
my existence over the earth? For I, Master Zacharius, am really the creator of
all the watches that I have fashioned! It is a part of my very soul that I have
shut up in each of these cases of iron, silver, or gold! Every time that one of
these accursed watches stops, I feel my heart cease beating, for I have
regulated them with its pulsations!’

As he spoke in this strange way, the old
man cast his eyes on his bench. There lay all the pieces of a watch that he had
carefully taken apart. He took up a sort of hollow cylinder, called a barrel,
in which the spring is enclosed, and removed the steel spiral, but instead of
relaxing itself, according to the laws of its elasticity, it remained coiled on
itself like a sleeping viper. It seemed knotted, like impotent old men whose
blood has long been congealed. Master Zacharius vainly essayed to uncoil it
with his thin fingers, the outlines of which were exaggerated on the wall; but
he tried in vain, and soon, with a terrible cry of anguish and rage, he threw
it through the trap-door into the boiling Rhone.

Gerande, her feet riveted to the floor,
stood breathless and motionless. She wished to approach her father, but could
not. Giddy hallucinations took possession of her. Suddenly she heard, in the
shade, a voice murmur in her ears, —

‘Gerande, dear Gerande! grief still keeps
you awake. Go in again, I beg of you; the night is cold.’

‘Aubert!’ whispered the young girl. ‘You!’

‘Ought I not to be troubled by what
troubles you?’

These soft words sent the blood back into
the young girl’s heart. She leaned on Aubert’s arm, and said to him, —

‘My father is very ill, Aubert! You alone
can cure him, for this disorder of the mind would not yield to his daughter’s
consolings. His mind is attacked by a very natural delusion, and in working
with him, repairing the watches, you will bring him back to reason. Aubert,’
she continued, ‘it is not true, is it, that his life is mixed up with that of
his watches?’

Aubert did not reply.

‘But is my father’s a trade condemned by
God?’ asked Gerande, trembling.

‘I know not,’ returned the apprentice,
warming the cold hands of the girl with his own. ‘But go back to your room, my
poor Gerande, and with sleep recover hope!’

Gerande slowly returned to her chamber, and remained there till
daylight, without sleep closing her eyelids. Meanwhile, Master Zacharius,
always mute and motionless, gazed at the river as it rolled turbulently at his
feet.

The severity of the Geneva merchant in
business matters has become proverbial. He is rigidly honourable, and
excessively just. What must, then, have been the shame of Master Zacharius,
when he saw these watches, which he had so carefully constructed, returning to
him from every direction?

It was certain that these watches had
suddenly stopped, and without any apparent reason. The wheels were in a good
condition and firmly fixed, but the springs had lost all elasticity. Vainly did
the watchmaker try to replace them; the wheels remained motionless. These
unaccountable derangements were greatly to the old man’s discredit. His noble
inventions had many times brought upon him suspicions of sorcery, which now seemed
confirmed. These rumours reached Gerande, and she often trembled for her
father, when she saw malicious glances directed towards him.

Yet on the morning after this night of
anguish, Master Zacharius seemed to resume work with some confidence. The
morning sun inspired him with some courage. Aubert hastened to join him in the
shop, and received an affable ‘Good-day.’

‘I am better,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t
know what strange pains in the head attacked me yesterday, but the sun has
quite chased them away, with the clouds of the night.’

‘In faith, master,’ returned Aubert, ‘I
don’t like the night for either of us!’

‘And thou art right, Aubert. If you ever
become a great man, you will understand that day is as necessary to you as
food. A great savant should be always ready to receive the homage of his fellow
men.’

‘Master, it seems to me that the pride of
science has possessed you.’

‘Pride, Aubert! Destroy my past, annihilate
my present, dissipate my future, and then it will be permitted to me to live in
obscurity! Poor boy, who comprehends not the sublime things to which my art is
wholly devoted! Art thou not but a tool in my hands?’

‘Yet, Master Zacharius,’ resumed Aubert, ‘I
have more than once merited your praise for the manner in which I adjusted the most
delicate parts of your watches and clocks.’

‘No doubt, Aubert; thou art a good workman,
such as I love; but when thou workest, thou thinkest thou hast in thy hands but
copper, silver, gold; thou dost not perceive these metals, which my genius
animates, palpitating like living flesh! So that thou wilt not die, with the
death of thy works!’

Master Zacharius remained silent after
these words; but Aubert essayed to keep up the conversation.

‘Indeed, master,’ said he, ‘I love to see
you work so unceasingly! You will be ready for the festival of our corporation,
for I see that the work on this crystal watch is going forward famously.’

‘No doubt, Aubert,’ cried the old
watchmaker, ‘and it will be no slight honour for me to have been able to cut
and shape the crystal to the durability of a diamond! Ah, Louis Berghem did
well to perfect the art of diamond-cutting, which has enabled me to polish and
pierce the hardest stones!’

Master Zacharius was holding several small
watch pieces of cut crystal, and of exquisite workmanship. The wheels, pivots,
and case of the watch were of the same material, and he had employed remarkable
skill in this very difficult task.

‘Would it not be fine,’ said he, his face
flushing, ‘to see this watch palpitating beneath its transparent envelope, and
to be able to count the beatings of its heart?’

‘I will wager, sir,’ replied the young
apprentice, ‘that it will not vary a second in a year.’

‘And you would wager on a certainty! Have I
not imparted to it all that is purest of myself? And does my heart vary? My
heart, I say?’

Aubert did not dare to lift his eyes to his
master’s face.

‘Tell me frankly,’ said the old man sadly.
‘Have you never taken me for a madman? Do you not think me sometimes subject to
dangerous folly? Yes; is it not so? In my daughter’s eyes and yours, I have often
read my condemnation. Oh!’ he cried, as if in pain, ‘to be misunderstood by
those whom one most loves in the world! But I will prove victoriously to thee,
Aubert, that I am right! Do not shake thy head, for thou wilt be astounded. The
day on which thou understandest how to listen to and comprehend me, thou wilt
see that I have discovered the secrets of existence, the secrets of the
mysterious union of the soul with the body!’

As he spoke thus, Master Zacharius appeared
superb in his vanity. His eyes glittered with a supernatural fire, and his
pride illumined every feature. And truly, if ever vanity was excusable, it was
that of Master Zacharius!

The watchmaking art, indeed, down to his
time, had remained almost in its infancy. From the day when Plato, four
centuries before the Christian era, invented the night watch, a sort of
clepsydra which indicated the hours of the night by the sound and playing of a
flute, the science had continued nearly stationary. The masters paid more
attention to the arts than to mechanics, and it was the period of beautiful
watches of iron, copper, wood, silver which were richly engraved, like one of
Cellini’s ewers. They made a masterpiece of chasing, which measured time
imperfectly, but was still a masterpiece. When the artist’s imagination was not
directed to the perfection of modelling, it set to work to create clocks with
moving figures and melodious sounds, whose appearance took all attention.
Besides, who troubled himself, in those days, with regulating the advance of
time? The delays of the law were not as yet invented; the physical and
astronomical sciences had not as yet established their calculations on
scrupulously exact measurements; there were neither establishments which were
shut at a given hour, nor trains which departed at a precise moment. In the
evening the curfew bell sounded; and at night the hours were cried amid the
universal silence. Certainly people did not live so long, if existence is
measured by the amount of business done; but they lived better. The mind was
enriched with the noble sentiments born of the contemplation of chefs-d’oeuvre.
They built a church in two centuries, a painter painted but few pictures in the
course of his life, a poet only composed one great work; but these were so many
masterpieces for afterages to appreciate.