ssion, the group he had placed with the
curiosity dealer, and a beautiful clock to which he was putting the last
touches, screwing in the last rivets.

This clock represented the twelve Hours, charmingly personified by
twelve female figures whirling round in so mad and swift a dance that
three little Loves perched on a pile of fruit and flowers could not stop
one of them; only the torn skirts of Midnight remained in the hand of
the most daring cherub. The group stood on an admirably treated base,
ornamented with grotesque beasts. The hours were told by a monstrous
mouth that opened to yawn, and each Hour bore some ingeniously
appropriate symbol characteristic of the various occupations of the day.

It is now easy to understand the extraordinary attachment of
Mademoiselle Fischer for her Livonian; she wanted him to be happy,
and she saw him pining, fading away in his attic. The causes of this
wretched state of affairs may be easily imagined. The peasant woman
watched this son of the North with the affection of a mother, with the
jealousy of a wife, and the spirit of a dragon; hence she managed to
put every kind of folly or dissipation out of his power by leaving him
destitute of money. She longed to keep her victim and companion for
herself alone, well conducted perforce, and she had no conception of
the cruelty of this senseless wish, since she, for her own part, was
accustomed to every privation. She loved Steinbock well enough not to
marry him, and too much to give him up to any other woman; she could not
resign herself to be no more than a mother to him, though she saw that
she was mad to think of playing the other part.

These contradictions, this ferocious jealousy, and the joy of having a
man to herself, all agitated her old maid's heart beyond measure. Really
in love as she had been for four years, she cherished the foolish hope
of prolonging this impossible and aimless way of life in which her
persistence would only be the ruin of the man she thought of as her
child. This contest between her instincts and her reason made her unjust
and tyrannical. She wreaked on the young man her vengeance for her own
lot in being neither young, rich, nor handsome; then, after each fit
of rage, recognizing herself wrong, she stooped to unlimited humility,
infinite tenderness. She never could sacrifice to her idol till she had
asserted her power by blows of the axe. In fact, it was the converse of
Shakespeare's _Tempest_--Calib