Eleven o'clock struck. Master Zacharius read in a loud voice:
"MAN SHOULD BE THE SLAVE OF SCIENCE, AND SACRIFICE TO IT RELATIVES AND FAMILY."
"Yes!" he cried, "there is nothing but science in this world!"
The hands slipped over the face of the clock with the hiss of a serpent, and the movement beat with accelerated strokes. Master Zacharius no longer spoke. He had fallen to the floor, he rattled, and from his oppressed bosom came only these half-broken words, "Life—science!"
The scene had now two new witnesses, the hermit and Aubert. Master Zacharius lay upon the floor; Gerande was praying beside him, more dead than alive. Of a sudden a dry, hard noise was heard, proceeding from the striking-apparatus.
Master Zacharius sprang up. " Midnight! " he cried.
The hermit stretched out his hand towards the old watchmaker, and midnight did not sound.
Master Zacharius uttered a terrible cry, when these words appeared:
"WHOEVER SHALL ATTEMPT TO MAKE HIMSELF THE EQUAL OF GOD SHALL BE FOREVER DAMNED!"
The old clock burst with a noise like thunder, and the spring, escaping, leaped across the hall with a thousand fantastic contortions; the old man rose, ran after it, trying in vain to seize it, and exclaiming, "My soul,—my soul!"
The spring bounded before him, first on one side, then on the other, and he could not reach it.
At last Pittonaccio seized it, and, uttering a horrible blasphemy, ingulfed himself in the earth.
Master Zacharius fell over. He was dead.
The old watchmaker was buried in the midst of the peaks of Andermatt.
Then Aubert and Gerande returned to Geneva, and during the long life which God accorded to them, they imposed it on themselves to redeem by prayer the soul of the castaway of science.
THE END
