Gerande remained silent.
“I must know,” added the old man, “if they have brought back any more of those accursed watches upon which the Devil has sent this epidemic!”
After these words Master Zacharius fell into complete silence, till he knocked at the door of his house, and for the first time since his convalescence descended to his shop, while Gerande sadly repaired to her chamber.
Just as Master Zacharius crossed the threshold of his shop, one of the many clocks suspended on the wall struck five o’clock. Usually the bells of these clocks—admirably regulated as they were—struck simultaneously, and this rejoiced the old man’s heart; but on this day the bells struck one after another, so that for a quarter of an hour the ear was deafened by the successive noises. Master Zacharius suffered acutely; he could not remain still, but went from one clock to the other, and beat the time to them, like a conductor who no longer has control over his musicians.
When the last had ceased striking, the door of the shop opened, and Master Zacharius shuddered from head to foot to see before him the little old man, who looked fixedly at him and said,—
“Master, may I not speak with you a few moments?”
“Who are you?” asked the watchmaker abruptly.
“A colleague. It is my business to regulate the sun.”
“Ah, you regulate the sun?” replied Master Zacharius eagerly, without wincing. “I can scarcely compliment you upon it. Your sun goes badly, and in order to make ourselves agree with it, we have to keep putting our clocks forward so much or back so much.”
“And by the cloven foot,” cried this weird personage, “you are right, my master! My sun does not always mark noon at the same moment as your clocks; but some day it will be known that this is because of the inequality of the earth’s transfer, and a mean noon will be invented which will regulate this irregularity!”