f 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.

CHAPTER II.

THE PRIDE OF SCIENCE.

The severity o