We looked in upon the annual exhibition of pictures at the Palais de
l'Industrie one day, and were particularly impressed with the _nudité_
of the modern school of French art. Pink-tinted flesh may be very
beautiful, but there must be something higher! We saw there, too,
another day, the clock on exhibition for a time before being consigned
to its destined place at Beauvais. It was even more wonderful than the
one so famous at Strasbourg. This was of the size of an ordinary church
organ, and of similar shape; a mass of gilt and chocolate-colored wood;
a mass of dials, great and small--of time tables, and, indeed, of tables
for computing everything earthly and heavenly, with dials to show the
time in fifty different places, and everything else that could, by any
possible connection with time, be supposed to belong to a clock. Upon
the top, Christ, seated in an arm-chair, was represented as judging the
world, his feet upon the clouds; on either side kneeling female figures
adored him. Just below, a pair of scales bided their time. On every peak
stood little images, while fifty puppets peeped out of fifty windows.
Just below the image of the Saviour, a figure emerged through an open
door at the striking of every quarter of an hour,--coming out with a
slide and occasional jerk by no means graceful. We had an opportunity of
observing all this in the three quarters of an hour of waiting. We
viewed the clock upon every side, being especially interested in a
picture at one point representing a rocky coast, a light-house, and a
long stretch of waves upon which labored two ships attached in some way
to the works within. They pitched back and forth without making any
progress whatever, in a way very suggestive to us, who had lately
suffered from a similar motion. A dozen priests seated themselves with
us upon the bench before the clock as the hand approached the hour. They
wore the long black robes and odd little skull-caps, that fit so like a
plaster, and which are, I am sure, kept in place by some law of
attraction unknown to us. One, of a different order, or higher grade, in
a shorter robe and with very thin legs, encased in black stockings that
added to their shadowy appearance, shuffled up to his place just in time
to throw back his head and open his mouth as the clock struck, and the
last judgment began. The cock upon the front gave a preliminary and weak
flap of his wings, and emitted three feeble, squeaky crows, that must, I
am sure, have convulsed the very puppets. Certainly they all disappeared
from the windows, and something jumped into their places intended to
represent flames, but which looked so much like reversed tin petticoats,
that we supposed for a moment they were all standing on their heads. All
the figures upon the peaks turned their backs upon us. The image of
Christ began to wave its hands. The kneeling women swayed back and
forth, clasping their own. Two angels raised to their lips long, gilt
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