, and the splendors of his exalted position,
felt his bosom swell with emotions of pride and happiness: Presently
he noticed the towers of a church in the distance, above the treetops.
"What building is that?" he asked. "May it please your Majesty, that is
the Church of St. Denis, where your royal ancestors have been buried for
many generations." The answer did not "please his Royal Majesty." There,
then, was the place where he too was to lie and moulder in the dust.
He turned, sick at heart, from the window, and was uneasy until he had
built him another palace, from which he could never be appalled by that
fatal prospect.

Something like the experience of Louis the Fourteenth was that of the
owner of

THE TERRIBLE CLOCK.

I give the story as transcribed from the original manuscript:--

The clock was bequeathed to me by an old friend who had recently died.
His mind had been a good deal disordered in the later period of his
life. This clock, I am told; seemed to have a strange fascination for
him. His eyes were fastened on it during the last hours of his life. He
died just at midnight. The clock struck twelve, the nurse told me, as he
drew his last breath, and then, without any known cause, stopped, with
both hands upon the hour.

It is a complex and costly piece of mechanism. The escapement is in
front, so that every tooth is seen as it frees itself. It shows the
phases of the moon, the month of the year, the day of the month, and the
day of the week, as well as the hour and minute of the day.

I had not owned it a week before I began to perceive the same kind
of fascination as that which its former owner had experienced. This
gradually grew upon me, and presently led to trains of thought which
became at first unwelcome, then worrying, and at last unendurable.
I began by taking offence at the moon. I did not like to see that
"something large and smooth and round," so like the skull which little
Peterkin picked up on the field of Blenheim. "How many times," I kept
saying to myself, "is that wicked old moon coming up to stare at me?" I
could not stand it. I stopped a part of the machinery, and the moon went
into permanent eclipse. By and by the sounds of the infernal machine
began to trouble and pursue me. They talked to me; more and more their
language became that of articulately speaking men. They twitted me with
the rapid flight of time. They hurried me, as if I had not a moment
to lose. Quick! Quick! Qu