The Eyes of Master Hanuš

A legend grew up about that remarkable work. When the clock first ran, half Prague came running to see it, and elsewhere people longed for such a near-miracle of their own. For that reason, it is said, the councillors of Prague had the eyes of the young man who made the clock burned out, so that he could not make its like for another town. The unhappy blind youth then got secretly into the tower one night and deliberately wrecked the marvellous mechanism; and when his revenge was done he sank down and died. And there was no one who knew how to repair it. People used to say that if the clock ever ran again there would be war — so they were not surprised that war came in 1866, for on New Year's night of that year the repaired clock was indeed set going again. The author of that ingenious and artful monument is said to have been Master Hanuš, a teacher of mathematics at the university, around 1490. After him the town clockkeeper was Master Jakub, perhaps his son; Václav Zvonek learned the trade with Jakub, and when he died in 1552 the keys of the clock were given to the clockmaker Hanuš of Platnéřská Street — but the very next day he begged the burgomaster and the councillors, for God's sake, to take the keys back from him, for it would drive him mad.