sters 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 after-ages to appreciate.

When the exact sciences began at last to make some progress,
watch and clock making followed in their path, though it was
always arrested by an insurmountable difficulty,--the regular and
continuous measurement of time.

It was in the midst of this stagnation that Master Zacharius
invented the escapement, which enabled him to obtain a mathematical
regularity by submitting the movement of the pendulum to a sustained
force. This invention had turned the old man's head. Pride, swelling
in his heart, like mercury in the thermometer, had attained the
height of transcendent folly. By analogy he had allowed himself to
be drawn to materialistic conclusions, and as he constructed his
watches, he fancied that he had discovered the secrets of the union
of the soul with the body.

Thus, on this day, perceiving that Aubert listened to him
attentively, he said to him in a tone of simple conviction,--

"Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended
the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou
examined thyself? No. And yet, with the eyes of science, thou
mightes