The large hand of the clock, having reached twelve, had abruptly stopped, and the clock did not strike the hour.
Gerande hastened to her father’s aid. He had fallen down motionless, and they carried him outside the church.
“It is the death-blow!” murmured Gerande, sobbing.
When he had been borne home, Master Zacharius lay upon his bed utterly crushed. Life seemed only to still exist on the surface of his body, like the last whiffs of smoke about a lamp just extinguished. When he came to his senses, Aubert and Gerande were leaning over him. In these last moments the future took in his eyes the shape of the present. He saw his daughter alone, without a protector.
“My son,” said he to Aubert, “I give my daughter to thee.”
So saying, he stretched out his hands towards his two children, who were thus united at his death-bed.
But soon Master Zacharius lifted himself up in a paroxysm of rage. The words of the little old man recurred to his mind.
“I do not wish to die!” he cried; “I cannot die! I, Master Zacharius, ought not to die! My books—my accounts!—”
With these words he sprang from his bed towards a book in which the names of his customers and the articles which had been sold to them were inscribed. He seized it and rapidly turned over its leaves, and his emaciated finger fixed itself on one of the pages.
“There!” he cried, “there! this old iron clock, sold to Pittonaccio! It is the only one that has not been returned to me! It still exists—it goes—it lives! Ah, I wish for it—I must find it! I will take such care of it that death will no longer seek me!”