"Oh no, you simple mother. It will have to be wound up every week."
"But will not the machinery wear out?"
"Yes, the metal and the stones will wear out and rust out before eight thousand years. But the principle will have eight thousand years of vitality in it. Steel and brass and rubies yield to friction and time, but a principle lives for ever if it is a true principle----"
"And a good principle," interrupted the voice of the old woman, piously.
"Good or bad, if it is true it will last," said the voice of the hunchback, harshly. Then he went on in more gentle and even tones. "On another face it will tell the time of high water in fifty great maritime cities. There will be four thousand Figures of Time, figures of all the great men of the past, each bearing a symbol of his greatest work, or thought, or achievement, and each appearing on the anniversary of his death, thus there will be from eight to twenty figures visible each day, and that day will be the anniversary of the one on which each of the men died years ago."
"Four thousand figures! Why, it will cost a fortune!"
"Four thousand historic figures each presented on the anniversary of death! I am at work on the figures of those who died on the 22nd of August just now. They are very interesting to me, and one of them is the most interesting of all, the most interesting of all the four thousand figures."
"And who died on the 22nd of August, Oscar? Whose is the figure that interests you most of all, my son?"
"Richard Plantagenet of Gloucester," fiercely.
"Eh?" in a tone of intense pain.