Master Zacharius

"Master Zacharius"
Illustration by Théophile Schuler
Author	Jules Verne
Original title	"Maître Zacharius ou l’horloger qui avait perdu son âme"
Translator	George Makepeace Towle (1874); Abby L. Alger (1874)
Country	France
Language	French
Published in	Musée des familles (1854); Doctor Ox (1874)
Media type	Print
Publication date	1854, revised 1874
Published in English	1874

"Master Zacharius, or the clockmaker who lost his soul" (French: Maître Zacharius ou l'horloger qui avait perdu son âme) is an 1854 short story by Jules Verne. The story, an intensely Romantic fantasy echoing the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, is a Faustian tragedy about an inventor whose overpowering pride leads to his downfall.

On a small island in the middle of the Rhone within the town of Geneva, the clockmaker Master Zacharius lives with his daughter Gerande, his apprentice Aubert Thun, and his elderly servant Scholastique. Zacharius is celebrated throughout France and Germany for having invented the escapement, and is fiercely proud of his successes. When the story opens, he is troubled by an inexplicable mystery: for several days, all of the many clocks he has made and sold have begun to suddenly stop, one by one. Unable to fix any of them or to find a reason for the phenomenon, Zacharius falls into mental torment and becomes seriously ill.

Gerande and Aubert, who have gradually fallen in love with one another, manage to nurse Zacharius into better health, but are surprised by the appearance of a stranger in the town, a bizarre creature like a cross between a small old man and an anthropomorphic clock. The creature confronts Zacharius directly, taunting him about the failed clocks and suggesting that death is coming to him, but Zacharius rebukes him with "a flush of outraged pride": "I, Master Zacharius, cannot die, for, as I have regulated time, time would end with me! … No, I can no more die than the Creator of this universe, that submitted to His laws! I have become His equal, and I have partaken of His power! If God has created eternity, Master Zacharius has created time!" The creature offers to give Zacharius the secret of the clocks' failure in exchange for the hand of Gerande in marriage. Zacharius refuses, and the creature disappears.

Over the following days, Zacharius's illness and angered pride continue to increase, as more and more of his former clients bring their broken clocks back to him, demanding refunds. One morning he is found to have disappeared from the town. Gerande and Aubert, consulting his account book and recalling words he had spoken during his convalescence, realize that he has left in search of an iron clock sold to one Pittonaccio in a castle in Andernatt: it is the only clock of his that has not been returned to him, and thus the only clock apparently still working. Aubert, Gerande, and Scholastique leave immediately in pursuit, find Zacharius at last, and chase helplessly as he runs frantically to the castle. The clock, a masterpiece representing an old church and presenting a Christian maxim for every hour of the day, is still there, but the visitors also find themselves face to face with the clocklike creature, who introduces himself as Signor Pittonaccio.