The clock in the corridor had just struck twelve, in a leisurely,
rhythmic, decorous manner. It was the habit of that tall old
narrow-cased clock to accelerate or retard, after its own sweet taste
and whim, the uniform and monotonous series of hours that encircle our
life until it wraps it and leaves it, like an infant in its crib, in
the obscure bosom of time.

Soon after this friendly indication of the old clock, uttered in a
solemn, peaceful voice becoming an aged person, the hour of eleven
rang out in a shrill, grotesque fashion, with juvenile impertinence,
from a petulant little clock of the vicinity, and a few minutes later,
to add to the confusion and the chronometric disorder, the bell of a
neighbouring church gave a single long, sonorous stroke that quivered
for several seconds in the silent atmosphere.

Which of the three clocks was correct? Which of those three devices
for the mensuration of time was the most exact in its indications?

The author cannot say, and he regrets it. He, regrets it, because
Time, according to certain solemn philosophers, is the canvas
background against which we embroider the follies of our existence,
and truly it is little scientific not to be able to indicate at
precisely which moment the canvas of this book begins. But the author
does not know; all he can say is, that at that moment the steeds of
night had for an appreciable time been coursing across the heavens. It
was, then, the hour of mystery; the hour when wicked folk stalk
abroad; the hour in which the poet dreams of immortality, rhyming
_hijos_ with _prolijos_ and _amor_ with _dolor_; the hour in which the
night-walker slinks forth from her lair and the gambler enters his;