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.