aster," said he, "I love to see you work so
unceasingly! You will be ready for the festival of our
corporation, for I see that the work on this crystal watch is
going forward famously."

"No doubt, Aubert," cried the old watchmaker, "and it will be no
slight honour for me to have been able to cut and shape the
crystal to the durability of a diamond! Ah, Louis Berghem did
well to perfect the art of diamond-cutting, which has enabled me
to polish and pierce the hardest stones!"

Master Zacharius was holding several small watch pieces of cut
crystal, and of exquisite workmanship. The wheels, pivots, and
case of the watch were of the same material, and he had employed
remarkable skill in this very difficult task.

"Would it not be fine," said he, his face flushing, "to see this
watch palpitating beneath its transparent envelope, and to be
able to count the beatings of its heart?"

"I will wager, sir," replied the young apprentice, "that it will
not vary a second in a year."

"And you would wager on a certainty! Have I not imparted to it
all that is purest of myself? And does my heart vary? My heart, I
say?"

Aubert did not dare to lift his eyes to his master's face.

"Tell me frankly," said the old man sadly. "Have you never taken
me for a madman? Do you not think me sometimes subject to
dangerous folly? Yes; is it not so? In my daughter's eyes and
yours, I have often read my condemnation. Oh!" he cried, as if in
pain, "to be misunderstood by those whom one most loves in the
world! But I will prove victoriously to thee, Aubert, that I am
right! Do not shake thy head, for thou wilt be astounded. The day
on which thou understandest how to listen to and comprehend me,
thou wilt see that I have discovered the secrets of existence,
the secrets of the mysterious union of the soul with the body!"

[Illustration: "Thou wilt see that I have discovered the secrets
of existence."]

As he spoke thus, Master Zacharius appeared superb in his vanity.
His eyes glittered with a supernatural fire, and his pride
illumined every feature. And truly, if ever vanity was excusable,
it was that of Master Zacharius!

The watchmaking art, indeed, down to his time, had remained
almost in its infancy. From the day when Plato, four centuries
before the Christian era, invented the night watch, a sort of
clepsydra which indicated the hours of the night by the sound and
playing of a flute, the science had continued nearly stationary.
The ma