Certainly it was unique–at least I had never seen anything like it.
Imagine an oblong box of bronze, about as long as one’s arm, and three-quarters as high. Around three sides of this box ran a little platform, heavily gilded. Immediately above this platform were twelve doors, three at either end, and six at the face. It was almost bare of ornament, except that on the top had been three figures. The heads and arms of all three were now broken off.
“Its very simplicity and ugliness interest one,” cried Mrs. Gordon with enthusiasm. “And those twelve doors certainly mean that it is an automaton, do they not, Mr. St. Hilary? One can imagine the stiff little figures that appear, each at its hour, and at their respective doors–kings with their crowns of gold, ginger-bread Virgins, prelates with their miters, and armored knights. Each figure in its hour does its devoirs, I suppose, and disappears again.”
“At every shake of the table,” said Jacqueline, “its bells clang angrily. You might think it was offended at being disturbed after its long sleep of two hundred years.”
“Yes,” confessed the duke, looking at the clock thoughtfully, “it awakes a fantastic note that will strike in the fancy of the most dull. Think what stories of love and intrigue it has listened to! What deeds of revenge and hate it has looked down upon! At what hours of agony and ecstasy have those bells not chimed? What death-knells to hopes, what peals of love and happiness!”
Jacqueline had been turning the clock slowly around. Suddenly she sank on her knees to examine it more closely, and read aloud:
Se mi guardi con cura,
Se mi ascolti con attenzione,
E se, nell’ intendermi, tu Sei cosi acorto com’ io lo sono nel dirti–
T’ arridera la Fortuna.