ck: the weights tumbled crashing to
the floor as his eyes fell from their sockets. He had removed the
master-spring, and his revenge was complete. The lovers devoted
their lives to the comfort of the blind clockmaker, and the wicked
magistrate was hooted from society. The clock remained a ruin until
1842, when parts of it were used in the new one constructed by
Schwilgue.

[Illustration: THE GREAT CLOCK.]

I found my bluebottle professor to be a Swiss, thirty years resident
in the city, very accessible and talkative, and, like every citizen by
adoption, more patriotic than even the native-born.

"It was a cheerless time for me, sir," said he as we contemplated
together the facade of the church, "when I saw that spire printed in
black against the flames of the town."

I begged frankly for his reminiscences.

"The bombardment of 1870," said the professor, "was begun purposely,
in contempt of the Bonapartist tradition, on the 15th of August,
the birthday of Napoleon. At half-past eleven at night, just as the
fireworks are usually set off on that evening, a shell came hissing
over the city and fell upon the Bank of France, crushing through the
skylight and shivering the whole staircase within: the bombardment
that time lasted only half an hour, but it found means, after much
killing and ruining among the private houses, to reach the buildings
of the Lyceum, where we had placed the wounded from the army of
Woerth. While the city was being touched off in every direction, like
a vast brush heap, we had to take these poor victims down into the
cellars."

"Do you think the bombs were purposely so directed?" I asked.

"Don't talk to me of stray shots!" said the burgher, hotly enough.
"The enemy was better acquainted with the city than we were ourselves,
and his fire was of a precision that extorted our admiration more than
once. Cannons planted in Kehl sent their shells high over the citadel,
like blows from a friend. An artillery that, after the third shot,
found the proper curve and bent the cross on the cathedral, cannot
plead extenuating circumstances and stray shots."

"Was the greatest damage done on that first night?"

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT THOMAS.]

"Ah no! The bombardment was addressed to us as an argument, proceeding
by degrees, and always in a _crescendo_: after the 15th there was
silence until the 18th; after the 18th, silence up to the 23d. The
grand victim of the 23d, you know, was the city lib