impressive or more ridiculous. A figure hacks with a sword at a figure complacently kneeling to receive the blow–that was all! But was it all? Was there not, behind the little 142figure, a background of bronze, a drop-curtain, so to speak? And on the background was there not something in bas-relief? I felt quite sure that there was, though the two automata must be the principal actors in the foolish scene. I jotted down as much as I could remember, and waited for three o’clock to strike. 142 But if the previous hour was disappointing, this was maddeningly so. This time I had the two lighted candles standing at the third door, that not a fraction of a second might be wasted. Again the whirr of the spring and the chime of bells. The third door opened slowly. The circular platform was pushed out again. A single figure this time. I watched it, breathless, and it did–nothing. It stood there motionless. But at the second glance I saw that it was designedly motionless. It was not an automaton. It was simply a piece of bronze cast in the shape of an old man in a flowing robe. The Doge’s cap was on his head. His right arm was lifted as if gesticulating. And as the hours struck, there appeared from the rear of the platform, in quick succession, tiny round disks. They sprang into line from within one after the other. Before the door closed I counted ten of them. They stood in a row, facing the immovable figure. There was again a bronze plate at the back. At first 143I thought it was ornamented with a geometrical design. But as I looked at it more closely, I saw that it was a gate. This scene was more tantalizing than the last. When the clock had been in perfect repair the ten disks must have been the basis for ten automata, much after the fashion of the Noah’s Ark men of our childhood. Naturally, the ten figures suggested the Council of Ten, and the single figure the Doge. But one would need some imagination to guess their significance. The clock might have a wonderful secret to tell, but it would take a genius or extraordinary luck to puzzle it out. 143 The clock ticked complacently. It seemed to jeer at me with its clacking rhythm. I lighted one of the duke’s excellent cigarettes. My nerves had been spurred to an ecstasy of excitement. I had expected wonderful things to happen. Nothing had happened. Nothing, I said to myself, was going to happen. I was very sleepy. The irritating tick-tock sounded far away. I nodded in my chair. The whirr of the spring and the silver
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