Chapter XVI: The Last of the Great Tarnov Crystal

Joseph and his father were still kneeling when there came unexpectedly a certain happening that changed the whole complexion of the day. It came from the alchemist.

He had been listening attentively through all the talk, he had followed back and forth the give-and-take of conversation, the balancing of argument, the gestures, the decisions, even though his eyes had seemed but half open. Just at this final moment he sprang up from his place behind the others like a dog leaping for a bone, and snatched the Tarnov Crystal out of the hands of the King.

Gripping it, he rushed like one gone wholly mad straight for the door, brushing aside a guard who fell back in astonishment.

“Stop him,” cried Jan Kanty, “he will do something desperate.”

They might better have tried to stop the wind. He was through the door and out on the balcony and down the steps to the court below, where the guards, though astonished, had yet no pretext for seizing him since he was an honored guest, one of the party of Jan Kanty. Through the little entrance to the court he went at top speed, just as the King, the scepter bearers, and the guards, followed by Pan Andrew and Joseph, with Jan Kanty behind, raced along the balcony and shouted to the guards below. These at once set out in pursuit, shouting in turn to guards at the farther gates. But the alchemist was traveling like a hurricane, and passing the men at arms at the very entrance to the castle, he was off down the slope to the meadows below where he swung to the left and bore toward the spot where the Vistula curves about the base of the Wawel.

Pan Andrew and Joseph continued in pursuit with the guards, but the King with Jan Kanty, seeing the alchemist’s direction, hurried to the extreme end of the fortifications where one looks down directly to the river. At the very water’s edge the alchemist turned and beckoned to his pursuers to stop, threatening by his motions to throw himself into the current which at that time of the year was swollen and swift. They paused, helpless, waiting until he chose to speak.

“Listen,” he cried, gazing first at the pursuing party that stood not far distant from him on the shore, and then directly upward where Jan Kanty and the King were leaning over the wall.

A curious figure he presented as he stood there for a moment in silence, his garments sadly disordered, his hair twitched hither and thither by the wind, his features working from emotion—the globe of amazing beauty in his hands.

“Listen!” His voice now rose shrill and screaming. “It was I that stole the crystal from Pan Andrew. The first sight of it drove honesty from my head as it has driven honesty from the heads of many who have seen it. I saw there all that magicians and astrologers of all ages have devoutly wished for. I saw there the means of working out a great name for myself, of becoming famous, of becoming envied over all the world. I was tempted and I fell, but I shall see to it that no more trouble comes from this accursed stone.”

He paused, overcome by the effort of so much speaking, but in a second a flood of wild laughter burst from him. “There was the student Tring,” he shouted, “yes, Tring—who used to be my student. Because I looked so much into the crystal my mind grew weak and he knew and I knew. It was he who said that if we but possessed the secret of turning brass into gold then we should have power without stint, and it was he who first directed me to read in the glass what formula I might find therein for such magic. What did I find there? . . . Only the reflections of my own crazed brain. And at last between us we have done nothing but cause want and misery and suffering all over Krakow. It is because of our madness that half the city is now but a heap of ashes, that men and women and children are homeless and in poverty.”

With these words his voice shrank to a wail, and he stood, a pitiful figure, his shoulders drooping, and his face turned toward the ground.

“Cease, man! We are thy friends,” shouted the scholar.

“Nay. Such as I have no friends. But”—his shoulders suddenly straightened—“with such jewels as this that cause strife between man and man, and war between nation and nation—here—now—I make an end!”

Then raising himself to such a height that for a moment he appeared to be a giant, he swung about and hurled the crystal into the air with all his force.

The sun struck it there as it seemed for a moment to hang between earth and sky like a glittering bubble or a shining planet. Then it fell, fell, fell—until it dropped with a splash into the black, hurried waters of the Vistula River, so that the circles for a moment beat back the waves of the rushing torrent—then all was as before.

Deep silence fell upon the onlookers. There was in the man’s act something solemn, something unearthly, something supernatural—his emotion was so great and the crystal had been such a beauteous thing; and when Jan Kanty said, “Let us pray,” the whole company fell upon their knees. When he had finished a simple prayer they went forward and took up the alchemist where he had fallen, for he had dropped down as if he had been suddenly overcome by a sickness. They carried him back to the tower of the Church of Our Lady Mary where his niece and Pan Andrew’s wife watched over him.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the King called the scholar into conference, and after much parley, and much weighing of pros and cons, it was decided that no attempt should be made to rescue the crystal from the bed of the river. There had been in its history too much of suffering and misfortune to make it a thing at all desirable to possess, in spite of the purity of its beauty.

And should its hiding place become known—should a foreign power again seek to obtain it, what chance had such a power with the King’s army and the fortified city of the Wawel forever ready in its defense? Surely never had treasure a safer resting place.

And so to this day it has never been disturbed, though in later centuries many men have sought for it, and it rests somewhere in the Vistula River near the Wawel, where the alchemist, Kreutz, threw it in the year 1462.

Pan Andrew received from the state enough recompense to rebuild his house in the Ukraine and he repaired there that same year, taking with him Elzbietka and the alchemist who was broken in health for a long time as the result of his experiences. When he came to his senses a few days after he had thrown the crystal into the river, he had returned to his right mind fully though he had no remembrance of the dark scenes in which he had played a part. The student Tring must have left for his home in Germany directly after the fire, for he was never seen again in Krakow. In later years he gained some fame in his own native village by the practice of magic, in which it was said that he often called upon the devil himself for assistance.

Joseph continued his studies in the university until he reached his twenty-second year, and then he returned to the Ukraine to manage his father’s estates. He was shortly afterward married to Elzbietka, the friend of his boyhood days. . . . And now since we have come to the happy end of all things in this tale, may we close with the thought that every Pole carries in his mind—with the words that are foremost in the Polish National Hymn:

May God Save Poland