lls struck one after another, so
that for a quarter of an hour the ear was deafened by the
successive noises. Master Zacharius suffered acutely; he could
not remain still, but went from one clock to the other, and beat
the time to them, like a conductor who no longer has control over
his musicians.

When the last had ceased striking, the door of the shop opened,
and Master Zacharius shuddered from head to foot to see before
him the little old man, who looked fixedly at him and said,--

"Master, may I not speak with you a few moments?"

"Who are you?" asked the watchmaker abruptly.

"A colleague. It is my business to regulate the sun."

"Ah, you regulate the sun?" replied Master Zacharius eagerly,
without wincing. "I can scarcely compliment you upon it. Your sun
goes badly, and in order to make ourselves agree with it, we have
to keep putting our clocks forward so much or back so much."

"And by the cloven foot," cried this weird personage, "you are
right, my master! My sun does not always mark noon at the same
moment as your clocks; but some day it will be known that this is
because of the inequality of the earth's transfer, and a mean
noon will be invented which will regulate this irregularity!"

"Shall I live till then?" asked the old man, with glistening
eyes.

"Without doubt," replied the little old man, laughing. "Can you
believe that you will ever die?"

"Alas! I am very ill now."

"Ah, let us talk of that. By Beelzebub! that will lead to just
what I wish to speak to you about."

Saying this, the strange being leaped upon the old leather chair,
and carried his legs one under the other, after the fashion of
the bones which the painters of funeral hangings cross beneath
death's heads. Then he resumed, in an ironical tone,--

[Illustration: Then he resumed, in an ironical tone]

"Let us see, Master Zacharius, what is going on in this good town
of Geneva? They say that your health is failing, that your
watches have need of a doctor!"

"Ah, do you believe that there is an intimate relation between
their existence and mine?" cried Master Zacharius.

"Why, I imagine that these watches have faults, even vices. 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