THE GREAT TARNOV CRYSTAL
It was late one evening in April, a few weeks after the unsuccessful
attack of Peter upon the tower, that the alchemist, Kreutz, and the
student, Johann Tring, were sitting upon rude stools in the loft above
the alchemist’s lodging, arguing with much heat some question that had
arisen between them. The day had been sultry for early spring and the
sun was setting red over the distant hills, flooding with its crimson
the high mound called the Krakus Mound over beyond the river on the road
to Wieliczka and the salt mines.
Tring sat where he could see the sunshine through the little window, but
the alchemist sat within the gathering darkness of the room. Above their
heads on the slanting walls vials and glass tubes of the alchemist’s
craft gleamed like precious stones, and every now and then some
substance lying upon the hot coals of the braziers would hiss up into a
little flame and smoke, for all the world like a serpent suddenly
raising its slender head and coils above a quiet patch of grass.
“I tell you that I have had enough,” the alchemist replied to some
remark of the student’s. “I am ready to forswear this scientific
experiment into which we have so boldly launched and go back to my old
studies which are much better suited to a God-fearing man.”
Tring laughed, low but maliciously. “So that is where your courage
lies,” he answered. “That is the crown of valor that you boast in
exploring the wonders of the unknown world. Come,” he added after a
minute, as if changing his tactics in dealing with this man who was now
thoroughly in his power, or so he thought, “come and put a better
complexion upon things; we are already past the hardest stretch of the
road—if there is to be found the solution to that problem upon which we
both have spent so much time, it will be found so much the more readily
now because of the sacrifices that we have already made for it. Are the
trances tiring you beyond endurance?”
The alchemist let his head sink into his hands. “I am tired—I am
tired,” was all that he could say.
Tring regarded him with disgust, but held back the angry words which
sprang to his lips and expressed himself more gently.
“Then if there is a fault it must lie with you, Pan Kreutz,” he said.
“It is beyond my understanding that such a man as you should find
exhaustion in these simple experiments that I have performed. Many
another person I have put into trances similar to yours, and for longer
periods of time, too, and there has been no harm, nay, nor physical
exhaustion from it.”
“Alas,” the alchemist moaned as if making a confession, “I have been in
trances other than those of your making, and almost continually, too.”
“What?” Tring leaped to his feet in astonishment. “What do you say? You
have been in trances induced by others? Other men share our secrets,
then? Who may it be that is also a master of this rare craft? I had
thought that no others, save I, in this town were able to bring about
such trances.” He glared at Kreutz with open hatred and let his fingers
stray as well to the handle of a short knife that he carried in his
belt, for although he was but a young man, he took his occult powers
very seriously. There was as well an element of fear in his emotions,
since the civil authorities of that day dealt usually in short and
severe fashion with persons brought before magistrates on the charge of
indulging in dark or occult practices. Death even was prescribed as
punishment for some, although disfiguring, whipping, stocks, and
banishment were the most common penalties.
Tring’s powers, though mysterious in those days, could be easily
explained in ours. The so-called trances into which certain persons have
the power to send others we call in these times merely hypnotic sleep.
Hypnotism in the days when all men and women were to an extent
superstitious was looked upon as one of the very worst works of a
malignant devil upon earth. Tring possessed to some extent the ability
to summon hypnotic sleep to a willing patient, and the alchemist had
become a too willing patient in his endeavor to discover the secret that
Tring had made appear so desirable.
And as is the case with most practitioners of hypnotism and their
subjects, the hypnotist had gained, little by little, more and more
power over his co-worker, until in a few months the alchemist had become
merely a tool in the hands of Tring, who, knowing his ability and
scholarly accomplishments, did not hesitate to use them for his own
ends. He did this, however, with great caution, and enjoined ever upon
the alchemist the need for the utmost secrecy, for if it had become
known that such tricks were being practiced, the law would make short
shrift of both.
“No man,” answered the wretched alchemist, “no _man_, but
perhaps—devils!”
“Devils?” Tring stood motionless, thunderstruck. Was the alchemist
losing his mind?
“Yes, devils. I can stand it no longer.” The alchemist rose from his
stool and turned upon Tring. “You who have powers greater than man, know
most of what is passing in my soul. The secrets of my craft, the
sciences of actions and reactions—all these you know. But I hold from
_you_ one secret, one great secret which has bowed my shoulders with
care and blackened my heart with crime. Come, watch, I will show you
something that has powers beyond those of which you dream. See . . .”
His accents became wilder and his voice trembled. He shuffled about the
attic as if making preparations for some experiment. He set up a tripod
in the very middle of the room and linked the top with chains as if he
were to set a bowl upon it; he unlocked a great chest that stood in one
corner under the eaves and took from it some object wrapped in black
cloths, and this object he placed upon the tripod.
“Now let us have a light,” he said.
He shook some powder into a brazier full of coals which suddenly leaped
into flame. As the whole room burst into existence with the illumination
there appeared most prominently in it the tripod which bore the covered
mystery. The alchemist whipped the cloth covering away.
It was as if he had uncovered a diamond of the finest water! Upon the
brass top of the tripod gleamed in that instant a very miracle of color
and light; the object itself was about the size of a man’s head. Upon
this exquisite thing no artificial effort of man had been expended; it
was as nature had fashioned it in the depths of some subterranean grotto
where drops of water falling in steady succession for thousands and
thousands of years had slowly created it. The outer layers were clear
like the water of a mountain spring; as the eye fell farther and farther
within the surface a bluish tint was perceptible and at the very center
there was a coloring of rose. Such was its absolute beauty that whoever
looked into its depths seemed to be gazing into a sea without limit.
[Illustration: _The Tower of the Town Hall and One End of the Cloth
Hall. In the Foreground Stood the Old Town Pillory._]
“In the name of Heaven,” shrieked Tring, “what is this?”
The alchemist spoke in a low voice as one might speak in a church: “The
Great Tarnov Crystal.”
“The Great Tarnov Crystal!” repeated Tring. “The Great Tarnov Crystal!
. . . Why, that is the stone for which alchemists and workers of magic
have been searching these hundreds of years. The Great Tarnov Crystal!”
He shouted it almost in high excitement. “Why, man, we have here the
greatest scientific treasure of all ages.” He began to skip about in
transports as the possibilities of the treasure’s possession leaped into
his mind. “And now I understand,” he continued. “Indeed you have been
under the hand of a devil if you have been gazing into that thing. Why,
do you know that this stone can send a man into a trance in which all
manner of truths will be divulged? Do you know that we can learn now for
a certainty the very secret that we have been seeking?” And going close
to the stone, he gazed into its depths as a thirsty man might gaze into
a well of water.
There was this curious property of the Great Tarnov Crystal, and perhaps
of all great crystals in the world’s history, that it never presented
the same vista twice to the man who looked within its depths. Now this
may have been due to many things, to the fact that the lights
surrounding it were never twice the same, and also perhaps to this, that
the crystal had the strange property of reflecting back to the observer
the very thoughts that were tucked away deeply in his head. What drew
men to the Tarnov Crystal in the beginning was, of course, its beauty,
its color, its light, its constantly changing vistas, and besides these,
there was that indefinable fascination that all such stones have.
Diamonds, as well, possess this fascinating power to a high degree
though the diamond is, of course, a small stone, and not large enough to
hold the concentrated focus of two eyes for a very long time; the
crystal by reason of its size possesses this quality according to its
fineness.
The Tarnov Crystal was the finest crystal known to the magicians of the
Middle Ages. And although magic was frowned upon by scholars and men of
science such as astronomers and alchemists, still there was no distinct
line between science and magic, with the result that many of these men
found themselves practicing magic when they had intended only to make
scientific investigations. It was even so with Pan Kreutz, who
ordinarily had but little use for magic or the Black Arts in any
form—until now he had come entirely under the domination of the student
Tring whose enthusiasm had carried him away.
“I tell you that I have had enough,” the alchemist repeated now. “I have
perjured my soul to obtain this stone and I am ready to return it to its
rightful owners. This stone is a thing of wickedness and blood and it
has a woeful history, as old perhaps as the world itself.”
“Return it!” shouted Tring. “Return it! Why, Pan Kreutz, listen to my
reasoning. I know not how you have come by this thing—I do not ask at
present—but you would be scarce the man I took you for did you not use
it for the purpose that we need it. After that we may return it—if
indeed it has been stolen—or if it sticks within your conscience to
retain it now, then perhaps I——”
“Nay, nay, Johann Tring,” exclaimed the alchemist emphatically, “to its
rightful owners it shall go. Here I have kept the secret to myself
knowing that the knowledge would tempt you—and indeed you would not
have known now unless the secret had burned so heavily in my brain.”
“As you will,” said Tring, humoring the alchemist with his concession,
though the purpose in his eyes was of different intent, “but first let
us learn from it at once how to transmute baser metals into gold; this I
am sure we shall do, then we can be independent of these smirking dogs
who rule the universities.”
“Then let our experiments be brief,” said the alchemist. “I have looked
too long upon this glittering thing.”
“You should have told me before.” Tring again adopted the attitude of a
kindly adviser.
“But, in truth,” went on the alchemist, “I doubt if we can wring that
secret from the crystal. I have now an opinion, though perhaps a wrong
one, that the crystal only gives us back our own thoughts. We may not
call upon it as upon some friendly spirit to tell us what we do not
know—we may not wish and have our wishes fulfilled. I begin to doubt it
all.” Here he rose to his feet and began to stride about the floor. “It
is already having a bad influence upon me. I cannot see straightly in
the world of men as once I did. When I have looked into it for minutes
and minutes my thoughts come back to me crookedly, and while I have
taken much interest in such contemplation, I find that there is too
deadly a fascination in gazing into those crystal depths. I have, as I
said, found much of interest, and were I alone in the world, I might
even pursue these studies to the very limits of human thought, but I
sometimes feel as if my very soul were getting caught in the rays of
that bright thing.”
“Might I ask,” inquired Tring, unable to restrain his curiosity longer,
“how the crystal came into your possession?”
“It was like this”—the alchemist willingly relieved his mind of the
secret that he had been bearing alone. “That night when the thieves came
here some time ago I entertained them for a bit with some Greek fire and
niter.”
“Yes?”
“It seems that the crystal was at that time in the possession of the
family in the rooms below ours.”
“What! The trumpeter and the boy who bear the name Kovalski?”
“Yes, though that is not their name. They are Charnetskis and lived
formerly in the Ukraine.”
“I see—and the thieves? Tartars and Cossacks who followed them perhaps
from the Dnieper country?”
“Yes, the crystal was actually in the hands of the leader when I
surprised him with an explosive powder. In the surprise and pain
occasioned by my attack he dropped the crystal—the powder blazed about
his face and burned his hair—the crystal rolled upon the floor and I
pounced upon it.”
“But how had it come into the possession of the Charnetski family?”
asked Tring eagerly.
“It was in this fashion. When the Tartars devastated the Polish country
in the thirteenth century the village that stood where now is Tarnov was
inhabited by the Charnetskis, among others, of course. It was Andrew
Charnetski of that day who performed heroic feats in the defense of the
city against the Tartars, and to him was presented for safe-keeping the
great crystal which has come to be known as the Great Tarnov Crystal. It
was the chief ornament of the old town, and even kings had come there to
see it. For besides its qualities as a thing of rare value and beauty,
it had those reputed properties you have mentioned: that a man who
looked into it might there read the secrets of the past and the future;
that he might find out the intimate thoughts of other men and women;
that he might learn to overcome the elements, to fly through the air
like a bird, to walk invisibly, to transmute base metals into gold. In
those times no man was allowed to look more than three minutes upon it,
for even in three minutes a man might find his head swimming and curious
thoughts coming into his brain.”
“But how did the Charnetskis save it from the Tartars?”
“They fled with it to the Carpathian Mountains and remained there until
Batu the Tartar was forced to return to the land of the Golden Horde.
Then as it passed from eldest son to eldest son, it went to an ancestor
of this Andrew Charnetski who settled in the Ukraine after the country
had been put under Polish dominion in the days of Vladislas Jagiello. Of
course the name Andrew Charnetski is by no means an uncommon one
throughout Poland, so little did I think when this man came into the
humble lodgings below that he belonged to the Charnetski family which
had possession of the Tarnov Crystal.”
“Did he tell you his story?”
“Yes. On the day after the crystal disappeared, he made a confidant of
me as one already acquainted with his name and a part of his history.”
“But you had heard of the crystal before?”
“What alchemist has not?” he answered. “I knew that it was brought in
early days to Egypt from somewhere in the East, and there it stood in a
temple for many centuries. When the Romans conquered Egypt, the crystal
was taken to Rome. During the years when the Romans were colonizing the
lands around the Black Sea a certain Roman officer fell in love with a
woman of Transylvania, and being sent there with a legion, stole for her
this crystal from a temple in Rome. When his crime was discovered the
Emperor sent a detachment of soldiers to bring him back, but he fled to
the district which is now Halicz, but which went then under the Roman
name Galicia. There he lived with his wife under an assumed name, in a
remote village later known as Tarnov, and there the crystal remained up
to the time that it passed into the hands of the Charnetskis. Around it
grew up a sect of sorcerers, magicians, practicers of the Black Art,
astrologers, and alchemists—some sincere, others mere charlatans.”
“Surely there have been many attempts to steal the crystal from the
Charnetskis?”
“Only one. It seems that men, even alchemists and astrologers, lost for
a time the thread of its history, and it was only when a runaway servant
of Andrew Charnetski spread the news in the East that it was in his
possession that an attempt was made to find it. That attempt, as you
know, cost Pan Andrew his house and property in the Ukraine. Who it is
that is inciting these robbers I know not, but I have no doubt that the
leader of the band was in the pay of some person in high authority.”
“Would the robbers taken prisoners say nothing?”
“No, they did not know all, I believe. And like most Tartars they would
rather die than betray a secret. Torture could not wring it out of
them.”
“Does Pan Andrew suspect that you have the crystal?”
“Pan Andrew considers me his friend. And at heart I am ashamed and sick
that I have not restored it before now.”
“But think. If it had not been for you, the Cossack would have escaped
with the crystal and it would have been lost forever.”
“I know it. Yet that is no justification for me. I stole it if a thief
ever stole anything. When I first saw it that night on the floor of Pan
Andrew’s lodging I would have exchanged my chance of heaven for its
possession. When I had obtained it, and the attention of the crowd in
the court below was turned to the robbers and to the man escaping over
the roofs, I brought it here to the loft, under my coat.”
“You did well,” said Tring, the wildest impulses of excitement leaping
within him. “Look—look at the crystal. It glows and dances and quivers
like a thing alive, ready to tell its secrets. Quick, draw your chair
near to it as you used to draw your chair to me when I was the master of
your trances. Gaze deeply into it”—he fixed the hesitating alchemist
with his eyes as a serpent might fix a helpless bird—“and now let us
try the greatest experiment of all.”
The alchemist pulled his chair close to the crystal as he was bid, and
fixed his eyes upon it. Tring watched him closely from a distance. One
minute—two minutes—three—the alchemist still looked at the crystal
and Tring regarded him as a cat might regard a mouse that it was playing
with. Four minutes—five. The alchemist still sat motionless, but his
posture in the chair was changing slightly. His arms and neck seemed to
be stiffening, his face was taking on the look of an entirely different
person; his breath came regularly but in longer and deeper draughts than
was his wont. His eyes became wide open and staring.
“Listen,” Tring’s tone was sharp, commanding.
“I am listening,” the reply came instantly.
Tring trembled with excitement. Not only had the alchemist gone into
this trance more quickly than he, Tring, had ever been able to send him,
but he was still responsive to the student who had feared lest the
agency of the crystal might render Kreutz unresponsive to him. But Tring
had sent him into trances so many times that now his mind seemed to
answer the student’s bidding automatically.
“Tell me what you see.”
“I can see a huge hall like an alchemist’s room, filled with braziers
and glass instruments. In these instruments fluids of fire are rushing
to and fro and near them are great copper kettles out of which are
coming puffs of steam.”
“It is the devil’s workshop that you are in,” said Tring sharply. “Do
you see any men at work?”
There was silence a moment as the alchemist’s consciousness went roaming
through the vast room.
“There is no one here,” he said at length.
“Are there any manuscripts there?” demanded Tring.
Silence again. Then—“Yes, on the wall hangs a parchment.”
“Take it down.”
“It burns my hands.”
“Pay no heed to that. Your reward will be greater than your pains.”
“It is in my hands.”
Tring glanced involuntarily at the hands of the man in the trance.
Curiously enough they seemed to be turning red as if exposed to a great
heat. “Now read what the parchment says.”
The alchemist replied slowly as if reading, and he spoke in the Latin
tongue, “Here May One Find Things Which Be Neither Good Nor Evil But
Which Are Sought of All Men.”
“Good! Now unroll the parchment.”
There was another silence. At length the alchemist said, “I have found
somewhat.”
“Read!”
“Nay, I may not. It is in symbols.”
“Then write.” Tring deftly slipped a piece of board across his knees and
put into his fingers a kind of pen made of wood and a feather; this he
had dipped into a pot of ink as thick as paint, and he guided it in the
alchemist’s hand until it rested upon a piece of fresh white parchment
that he laid upon the board.
The alchemist wrote as follows:
[Illustration: PerθΔ8 _Fit Lapis Philosophorum_]
“What else?”
The alchemist wrote:
“_Quod primum incredibile, non continuo falsum est; crebro siquidem
faciem mendacii veritas retinet._”
“No. That’s nothing. Do you find other formulæ?”
The alchemist looked closely and recited as if reading:
“Thus saith Olimpiodorus of Thebes, Osthanes the Egyptian, Psellos of
Byzantium, and Giabr of Arabia: heat the fires upon thy brazier and
place thereon a vessel full of yellow sulphur; this thou shalt melt
until it gives forth a spirit; when the spirit is departed pour slowly
upon the sulphur that quicksilver which has its birth in the planet
Mercury. In but the twinkling of an eye this will be reduced from its
natural state unto a state that is of the earth, black, without life,
dead. Then take this lifeless substance and put it in a closed vessel;
heat it and it will suddenly take on life again and become a brilliant
red.”
“Write it, write it,” exclaimed Tring. The alchemist wrote. “And is
there more?”
“Much. It saith here that this is the secret of the Seven Golden
Chapters, of the Emerald Table, and the Pimander. _Natura naturam
superat; deinde vero natura naturae congaudet; tandem natura naturam
continet._”
“No more of that. That is vile philosophy,” shouted Tring. “Find and
write the completion of the Philosopher’s Stone, by which we may convert
brass into gold.”
The alchemist continued:
“Zosimus the Theban directs that this is the true method of turning
brass into gold: To the above heated solution of sulphur and mercury add
that pure niter which men find in the heart of India. Into this cast
brass and it will in a moment change to gold.”
“Quick, to work. Light the braziers and bring out sulphur, quicksilver,
and brass,” commanded Tring. “Have you any of this Indian niter?”
“I have—a small packet on the third shelf of the closet,” answered the
alchemist. Tring rushed to get it and set all the materials ready for
the experiment. Truly and sincerely did he believe that the alchemist
had hit upon the solution of the much desired process of changing base
metals into gold, and his own lack of knowledge in the realm of the
science of alchemy was responsible for the ignorance with which he
ordered the alchemist to compound one of the most dangerous chemicals
known to man. The alchemist, on his part, was but acting under the
hypnotic suggestion of Tring, and had no opportunity to interpose his
normal-self sense between the student’s intention and its execution.
Indeed the information he had during the trance came from his own fund
of learning, although the suggestion of adding niter to the heated
compound was but a fancy of a mind grown either tired or weak.
As the student hurried about arranging materials for the experiment
Kreutz sang a Latin hymn which extols the practice of alchemy and the
alchemist:
_Inexhaustium fert thesaurum_
_Qui de virgis fecit aurum_
_Gemmas de lapidibus._
“Compound the Philosopher’s Stone,” commanded Tring.
The alchemist, still in the trance, arose, and leaned over the brazier.
Something flaky and white and inflammable was tucked close to the bottom
to act as kindling, and a coal brought from a farther brazier and laid
upon this. It turned all black for a minute, then sizzled into an
intense heat and ignited the brazier’s contents. The flame was at first
yellow and creeping, then it changed to blue and leaping. Kreutz put a
vessel filled with sulphur into the flames, and sure enough in a moment
the spirit of the sulphur arose in fumes that filled the room.
Both leaned over the brazier eagerly as the alchemist shook mercury over
the melted sulphur. As the parchment had decreed, so the reaction
followed; in a short time the glittering mercury had mingled with the
melted sulphur and became an ugly black substance. Tring handed to
Kreutz another vessel which was closed at the top. Kreutz shook the hot
material from the first vessel into the second and put the latter back
on the brazier. In all his motions he acted mechanically as if he were
but working out the will of another. He opened this second vessel after
a few seconds and, sure enough, the black substance was becoming a
lively red.
“The niter; the niter,” exclaimed Tring eagerly at his elbow.
The alchemist took the package from his hands and tossed it into the
substance now seething with heat. As he did so, as if obeying some
unconscious instinct of self-preservation, he leaped back into the
middle of the room and drew Tring with him. The exclamation of anger on
Tring’s lips was cut in half, for at that instant the loft of the house
rocked in a terrific explosion!
“Quick, seize the crystal and descend!” screamed Tring, who was already
speeding through the doorway, frantically wiping sparks of fire from his
clothing.
The exploding substances had sent their flames into the dry roof and
walls of the house, and fire was leaping through them merrily.
Everything in the room was beginning to blaze, and in two minutes more
it would have been impossible to leave. The alchemist, still in a daze,
took the crystal as he had been commanded, and made for the stairway.
The stone gleamed in his hands like a million diamonds, rubies, and
emeralds where the flames fell upon it, and he clutched it with all the
strength of his right hand as he clung to the stair rail with his left,
now swaying out over the court like a drunken man, now regaining his
hold and descending another stair. But the student had been more nimble,
and by the time that the alchemist had descended to the third floor of
the house, Johann was down the stairs and through the gate, calling with
all his might for the watch to notify the water master that the house
above him was in flames. No watch was in sight and so he sought one at
full speed, and while he was searching, Pan Kreutz had reached the open
door and disappeared in the night, the Great Tarnov Crystal hidden under
the folds of his black gown.
But behind him the flames had eaten through the roof of his house and
had leaped to the adjoining house. In a few minutes they had bounded
clear across an open court near by, and had laid hold of one of the
pensions of the university. The wind then veering swept the flames in a
seething mass in the direction of the great Rynek, and in less than
fifteen minutes after the flight of the two men from the loft of the
building, the university section of Krakow was in the grip of a terrible
conflagration that threatened to devour the whole city.