“All of them.”
“All of them!” It was now the Count’s eyes that opened wide. “Well, isn’t that splendid.”
“I think this is for you,” she said, holding out a small envelope.
“Where did that come from?”
“It was slipped under your door. . . .”
Taking the envelope in hand, the Count could tell that it was empty; but in place of an address, the query Three o’clock? was written in a willowy script.
“Ah, yes,” said the Count, stuffing it in his pocket. “A small matter of business.” Then he thanked Sofia in a manner indicating that she could now be on her way.
And she replied, “You’re welcome,” in a manner indicating that she had no intention of going anywhere.
Thus had the Count leapt from his bed and clapped his hands at the first chime of the noon hour.
“Right,” he said. “How about some lunch? You must be famished. I think you will find the Piazza positively delightful. More than simply a restaurant, the Piazza was designed to be an extension of the city—of its gardens, markets, and thoroughfares.”
But as the Count continued with his description of the Piazza’s advantages, he noticed that Sofia was staring at his father’s clock with an expression of surprise. And when they passed over the threshold to go downstairs, she took another look back then hesitated—as if on the verge of asking how such a delicate device could generate such a lovely sound.
Well, thought the Count as he began to close the door, if she wanted to know the secrets of the twice-tolling clock, she had come to the right place. For not only did the Count know something of chronometry, he knew absolutely everything there was to know about this particular— “Uncle Alexander,” Sofia said in the tender tone of one who must deliver unhappy news. “I fear your clock is broken.”
Taken aback, the Count released his grip on the doorknob.
“Broken? No, no, I assure you, Sofia, my clock keeps perfect time. In fact, it was made by craftsmen known the world over for their commitment to precision.”
“It isn’t the timekeeper that is broken,” she explained. “It is the chime.”
“But it just chimed beautifully.”
“Yes. It chimed at noon. But it failed to chime at nine and ten and eleven.”
“Ah,” the Count said with a smile. “Normally, you would be perfectly right, my dear. But, you see, this is a twice-tolling clock. It was made many years ago to my father’s specifications to toll only twice a day.”
“But why?”
“Why indeed, my friend, why indeed. I’ll tell you what. Let us adjourn to the Piazza where—having placed our order and made ourselves comfortable—we shall investigate all the whys and wherefores of my father’s clock. For there is nothing more essential to the enjoyment of a civilized lunch than to have a lively topic of conversation.”
At 12:10 the Piazza was not yet bustling; but perhaps this was just as well, as the Count and Sofia received an excellent table and prompt attention from Martyn—a capable new waiter who pulled back Sofia’s chair with an admirable sense of politesse.
“My niece,” explained the Count, as Sofia looked around the room in amazement.
“I have a six-year-old of my own,” Martyn replied with a smile. “I’ll give you a moment.”
Granted, Sofia was not so unworldly as to be unfamiliar with elephants, but she had never seen anything quite like the Piazza. Not only was she marveling at the room’s scale and elegance, but at each of the individual elements that seemed to turn common sense on its head: A ceiling made of glass. A tropical garden indoors. A fountain in the middle of a room!
When Sofia completed her survey of the Piazza’s paradoxes, she seemed to understand instinctively that such a setting deserved an elevated standard of behavior. For she suddenly took her doll off the table and placed it on the empty chair to her right; when the Count slipped his napkin out from under his silverware to place it in his lap, Sofia followed suit, taking particular care not to jangle her fork and knife; and when, having placed their order with Martyn, the Count said Thank you so much, my good man, Sofia echoed the Count word for word. Then she looked to the Count, expectantly.
“Now?” she asked.
“Now what, my dear?”
“Is now when you will tell me about the twice-tolling clock?”
“Oh, yes. Precisely.”
But where to start?
Naturally enough, at the beginning.
The twice-tolling clock, the Count explained, had been commissioned by his father from the venerable firm of Breguet. Establishing their shop in Paris in 1775, the Breguets were quickly known the world over not only for the precision of their chronometers (that is, the accuracy of their clocks), but for the elaborate means by which their clocks could signal the passage of time. They had clocks that played a few measures of Mozart at the end of the hour. They had clocks that chimed not only at the hour but at the half and the quarter. They had clocks that displayed the phases of the moon, the progress of the seasons, and the cycle of the tides. But when the Count’s father visited their shop in 1882, he posed a very different sort of challenge for the firm: a clock that tolled only twice a day.
“Why would he do so?” asked the Count (in anticipation of his young listener’s favorite interrogative).
Quite simply, the Count’s father had believed that while a man should attend closely to life, he should not attend too closely to the clock. A student of both the Stoics and Montaigne, the Count’s father believed that our Creator had set aside the morning hours for industry. That is, if a man woke no later than six, engaged in a light repast, and then applied himself without interruption, by the hour of noon he should have accomplished a full day’s labor.
Thus, in his father’s view, the toll of twelve was a moment of reckoning. When the noon bell sounded, the diligent man could take pride in having made good use of the morning and sit down to his lunch with a clear conscience. But when it sounded for the frivolous man—the man who had squandered his morning in bed, or on breakfast with three papers, or on idle chatter in the sitting room—he had no choice but to ask for his Lord’s forgiveness.
In the afternoon, the Count’s father believed that a man should take care not to live by the watch in his waistcoat—marking the minutes as if the events of one’s life were stations on a railway line. Rather, having been suitably industrious before lunch, he should spend his afternoon in wise liberty. That is, he should walk among the willows, read a timeless text, converse with a friend beneath the pergola, or reflect before the fire—engaging in those endeavors that have no appointed hour, and that dictate their own beginnings and ends.
And the second chime?
The Count’s father was of the mind that one should never hear it. If one had lived one’s day well—in the service of industry, liberty, and the Lord—one should be soundly asleep long before twelve. So the second chime of the twice-tolling clock was most definitely a remonstrance. What are you doing up? it was meant to say. Were you so profligate with your daylight that you must hunt about for things to do in the dark?
“Your veal.”
“Ah. Thank you, Martyn.”
Quite appropriately, Martyn placed the first dish before Sofia and the second before the Count. Then he lingered a little closer to the table than was necessary.
“Thank you,” the Count said again in a polite sign of dismissal. But as the Count took up his silverware and began recalling for Sofia’s benefit how he and his sister would sit by the twice-tolling clock on the last night of December in order to ring in the New Year, Martyn took a step even closer.
“Yes?” asked the Count, somewhat impatiently.
Martyn hesitated.
“Shall I . . . cut the young lady’s meat?”
The Count looked across the table to where Sofia, fork in hand, was staring at her plate.
Mon Dieu, thought the Count.