- end_line
- 8569
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8506
- text
- the ideals, however wild, of ancient fable, but equally in aspect as in
organism be an original production; the more terrible to behold, the
better.
Such, then, were the suppositions as to the present scheme, and the
reserved intent. How, at the very threshold, so unlooked for a
catastrophe overturned all, or rather, what was the conjecture here, is
now to be set forth.
It was thought that on the day preceding the fatality, his visitors
having left him, Bannadonna had unpacked the belfry image, adjusted it,
and placed it in the retreat provided—a sort of sentry-box in one
corner of the belfry; in short, throughout the night, and for some part
of the ensuing morning, he had been engaged in arranging everything
connected with the domino; the issuing from the sentry-box each sixty
minutes; sliding along a grooved way, like a railway; advancing to the
clock-bell, with uplifted manacles; striking it at one of the twelve
junctions of the four-and-twenty hands; then wheeling, circling the
bell, and retiring to its post, there to bide for another sixty
minutes, when the same process was to be repeated; the bell, by a
cunning mechanism, meantime turning on its vertical axis, so as to
present, to the descending mace, the clasped hands of the next two
figures, when it would strike two, three, and so on, to the end. The
musical metal in this time-bell being so managed in the fusion, by some
art, perishing with its originator, that each of the clasps of the
four-and-twenty hands should give forth its own peculiar resonance when
parted.
But on the magic metal, the magic and metallic stranger never struck
but that one stroke, drove but that one nail, served but that one
clasp, by which Bannadonna clung to his ambitious life. For, after
winding up the creature in the sentry-box, so that, for the present,
skipping the intervening hours, it should not emerge till the hour of
one, but should then infallibly emerge, and, after deftly oiling the
grooves whereon it was to slide, it was surmised that the mechanician
must then have hurried to the bell, to give his final touches to its
sculpture. True artist, he here became absorbed; and absorption still
further intensified, it may be, by his striving to abate that strange
look of Una; which, though, before others, he had treated with such
unconcern, might not, in secret, have been without its thorn.
And so, for the interval, he was oblivious of his creature; which, not
oblivious of him, and true to its creation, and true to its heedful
winding up, left its post precisely at the given moment; along its
well-oiled route, slid noiselessly towards its mark; and, aiming at the
hand of Una, to ring one clangorous note, dully smote the intervening
brain of Bannadonna, turned backwards to it; the manacled arms then
instantly up-springing to their hovering poise. The falling body
clogged the thing’s return; so there it stood, still impending over
Bannadonna, as if whispering some post-mortem terror. The chisel lay
dropped from the hand, but beside the hand; the oil-flask spilled
across the iron track.
In his unhappy end, not unmindful of the rare genius of the
mechanician, the republic decreed him a stately funeral. It was
resolved that the great bell—the one whose casting had been jeopardized
through the timidity of the ill-starred workman—should be rung upon the
entrance of the bier into the cathedral. The most robust man of the
country round was assigned the office of bell-ringer.
But as the pall-bearers entered the cathedral porch, naught but a
broken and disastrous sound, like that of some lone Alpine land-slide,
fell from the tower upon their ears. And then, all was hushed.
- title
- Chunk 10