Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/76

46 "My father is there!" cried Gerande.

"Let us hasten thither," replied Aubert. "We may still save him!"

"Not for this life," murmured Gerande, " but at least for the other."

"By the grace of God, Gerande! The château of Andermatt stands in the gorge of the 'Dents-du-Midi,' twenty hours from Geneva. Let us go!"

That very evening Aubert and Gerande, followed by the old servant, set out on foot by the road which skirts Lake Leman. At last, late the next day, they reached the hermitage of Notre-Dame, which is situated at the base of the Dents-du-Midi, six hundred feet above the Rhone. They were nearly dead with fatigue. The hermit received the wanderers as night was falling. They could not have gone another step, and here they must needs rest.

The hermit could give them no news of Master Zacharius. They could scarcely hope to find him still living amid these sad solitudes. The night was dark, the wind howled amid the mountains, and the avalanches roared and thundered down from the summits of the broken crags.

Aubert and Gerande, crouching before the hermit's hearth, told him their melancholy tale. Their mantles, covered with snow, were drying in a corner; and without, the hermit's dog barked lugubriously, and mingled his voice with that of the tempest.

"Pride," said the hermit to his guests, "has lost an angel created for good. It is the obstacle against which the destinies of man strike. You cannot oppose reasoning to pride, the principal of all the vices, since, by its very nature, the proud man refuses to listen to it. It only remains, then, to pray for your father!"

All four knelt down, when the barking of the dog redoubled, and someone knocked at the door of the hermitage. "Open, in the name of the devil!"

The door yielded under the blows, and a disheveled, haggard, ill-clothed man appeared.

"My father!" cried Gerande. It was Master Zacharius.

"Where am I?" said he. "In eternity! Time is ended,—the hours no longer strike,—the hands have stopped!"