below,
undergoes such a reduction in its apparent size, as to obliterate its
intelligent features. It evinces no personality. Instead of bespeaking
volition, its gestures rather resemble the automatic ones of the arms of
a telegraph.

Musing, therefore, upon the purely Punchinello aspect of the human
figure thus beheld, it had indirectly occurred to Bannadonna to devise
some metallic agent, which should strike the hour with its mechanic
hand, with even greater precision than the vital one. And, moreover, as
the vital watchman on the roof, sallying from his retreat at the given
periods, walked to the bell with uplifted mace, to smite it, Bannadonna
had resolved that his invention should likewise possess the power of
locomotion, and, along with that, the appearance, at least, of
intelligence and will.

If the conjectures of those who claimed acquaintance with the intent of
Bannadonna be thus far correct, no unenterprising spirit could have been
his. But they stopped not here; intimating that though, indeed, his
design had, in the first place, been prompted by the sight of the
watchman, and confined to the devising of a subtle substitute for him:
yet, as is not seldom the case with projectors, by insensible
gradations, proceeding from comparatively pigmy aims to Titanic ones,
the original scheme had, in its anticipated eventualities, at last,
attained to an unheard of degree of daring.

He still bent his efforts upon the locomotive figure for the belfry, but
only as a partial type of an ulterior creature, a sort of elephantine
Helot, adapted to further, in a degree scarcely to be imagined, the
universal conveniences and glories of humanity; supplying nothing less
than a supplement to the Six Days' Work; stocking the earth with a new
serf, more useful than the ox, swifter than the dolphin, stronger than
the lion, more cunning than the ape, for industry an ant, more fiery
than serpents, and yet, in patience, another ass. All excellences of all
God-made creatures, which served man, were here to receive advancement,
and then to be combined in one. Talus was to have been the
all-accomplished Helot's name. Talus, iron slave to Bannadonna, and,
through him, to man.

Here, it might well be thought that, were these last conjectures as to
the foundling's secrets not erroneous, then must he have been hopelessly
infected with the craziest chimeras of his age; far outgoing Albert
Magus and Cornelius Agrippa. But the contrary was a