Free Merivel A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain Page A

mind and obliterating the lovely symmetry of the clock.
    And I reflected upon how one should strive to avoid judging a man’s sensibility by his daily habits, or the state of his clothes. To atone for my grosser thoughts I said to Hollers: ‘I do not understand, my good Friend, why, with work of this quality, you had any need to come into France. Do not your Countrymen command sufficient clocks from you already?’
    Hollers began to wrap the Timepiece once more in the baize, folding it over and over countless times. ‘It is perhaps,’ he said, ‘the Curse of our Age, but to get a little Name in Holland has not felt sufficient to me. I seem to live to
desire more
. If Madame de Maintenon will be my Patron, then I will move my Enterprise to Paris and I will become famous.’
    I wished him well and he went off, and my heart began suddenly to be afraid for him. To endure a life of Jam and Oatmeal for so long and then, at the end of it, to come away with nothing did strike me as a lamentable thing and I found myself praying that this would not happen.
    In my mind I followed Hollers as he made his anxious way to Madame de Maintenon’s Rooms. I had caught sight of her only once: a stout woman of mature years, of no particular beauty, dressed all in black Velvet. But Reputation told me that she was extremely clever and full of Wit, and it was these things that held the King to her. Nothing indicated to me whether or not she might be moved by a delicate Dutch clock.
    I sat down on Hollers’s bed, where I could still see the impress of his body. I tried to imagine his dreams become reality: the sign above his Premises in Paris, situated near the Seine, with the light from the river flickering in upon the shining brass of innumerable Pointers and Pendulums.
    And as the seconds and minutes moved on, I pondered Man’s efforts at the representation or ‘capture’ of Time, and I thought how, for Clockmakers like Hollers, the very Commodity with which they were trying to work was a heartless and capricious Enemy, who stole from them all the while and never rested.
    When Hollers returned it was almost dark in our little room. He came in, and sat down upon my cot and rubbed his eyes.
    ‘Well, Hollers?’ said I, rising up, ‘how did it unfold? Did Madame take the Clock to her bosom? Is your future assured?’
    Hollers let escape a long sigh and reached for the box that contained the Oatmeal and the Jam. He began spooning jam into his mouth, shaking his head as he did so. ‘I do not know if I shall survive, Merivel,’ he said at length.
    ‘What d’you mean?’ said I.
    ‘Look at this Jam. It is running low.’
    ‘That is my fault. I have eaten too much of it.’
    ‘No, no. You have shared your Peas with me. But how long can either of us survive?’
    ‘So Madame de Maintenon did not admire the Clock?’
    ‘She said she considered the
Facework
of the Clock “very pretty”. But she insisted that she judged nothing on earth by its Face and that I should wait out a period of Time (she did not say how long) during which she would see whether the
Workings
of the Clock were accurate. She wishes the Time shown by it to deviate by no more than one minute per day, whether fast or slow, from the time told by the Great Clock of the Chapel. She said, if it did not keep “God’s Time” it was no use to her.’
    ‘I see,’ said I, ‘but surely I see some flaw here, my friend. For supposing your Timepiece is
more accurate
than the cumbersome Chapel Clock, with all its mighty Cogs and Escapements? How would she be able to ascertain this?’
    ‘She would not be able to ascertain it. She believes the Chapel Clock to be the infallible Arbiter of Time and would never admit to any fault in its workings. My Clock must chime with it, or I am lost.’
    We had no choice but to let yet more days go by, during which Hollers’s agitation grew into a very palpable thing, only relieved a little by our fortunate discovery, early one morning, of a