The Trumpeter of Krakow quotes

The Tartars fell upon the city in the night and, after burning the outlying villages, pillaged the districts that lay about the churches of St. Florian, St. John, and the Holy Cross.

The whole night long was one of hideous sounds—the crackling and fury of flames, the snarling and yelling of the enemy when they found that the prey had fled, their roars of triumph when they came upon gold and treasure.

As morning dawned the watchers from the Wawel looked out over the town and saw but three churches not already in flames. These were the Church of Our Lady Mary near the great market, the Church of St.

“My mother and sister are safe,” he thought. “May God be praised for that! They are gone these ten days and must be now with the cousins in Moravia.”

It came to him then what a sweet thing life is.

The sun over the Vistula was now reflected in the windows of the Cathedral of the Wawel where the priests were already saying mass. At the tops of all the gates he could see guards in full armor upon which the sunlight flashed.

“I shall keep my word,” he mused. “If I die it shall be for that.

My word is as good as my life.

”

Here a driver was conveying a load of skins, here one had nothing but black earth for enriching city gardens. Another, driving a load of poultry, wore around his neck, like beads, garland after garland of dried mushrooms strung upon strings.

At the back of the picture rose the foothills of the Carpathians, misty and golden in the early sun, and at a distance the Vistula River curved like a silver bracelet about the Wawel Hill.

All about was the early-morning smell of wet grass and fresh earth and growing things.

… been heard mingling with the clashing of the great bell on the Church of Our Lady Mary and the chanted service of the Armenian merchants who had come in from Trebizond and the lands beyond the Black Sea with carpets and spices and fine rugs.

Here for the moment in this great international capital of East and West was worshiped every god that man knows; it might even be said that God himself was worshiped under many names and in many languages and dialects.

Here were Turks, Cossacks, Ruthenians, Germans, Flemings, Czechs, and Slovaks, with their wares to sell, and Hungarians with their wines from the mellow plains of Transylvania.

His tongue found no words.

Boys of fifteen, even if aged by experience, have little to say when praise is bestowed so freely.

Moreover the man gave him no opportunity. “Remarkable,” he said, “remarkable. As swift a leap as I ever saw,” and then blinking with his eyes as if the light hurt them, added, “or hope to see.”

“Nay, daughter,” he said, “it is I who need thy blessing, since I know what fortitude and courage thy kind heart possesses.”

She kissed his hand nevertheless, as did Joseph immediately afterward, and Pan Andrew turned away quickly lest they should see that his eyes were moist, for there is such power in kindness well bestowed that it touches the wells of human feeling.

There was, too, something in this scholar-priest that went at once to the heart, some fine quality of feeling and spirituality that set him apart, though ever so sweetly and gently, from other men.

“Bring him along with us,” said the father with a laugh, “we can’t have too many friends just now.” And at that they continued on their way.

Now of all the creatures that God has put in the world a dog is the most curious, and sometimes, one might think, the most discerning.

For when this same animal had broken loose in the morning, his first impulse, which he had followed, had been that of flight. His second impulse was to look for a friend, since no dog can live without a friend.

Joseph took an early opportunity, after he had eaten the breakfast brought by the old woman who lived below, to run forth into the Street of the Pigeons with the dog, whom he named at once Wolf.

In the daytime the street wore little of the sinister aspect that it carried at night; the little oval windows that had seemed then like wicked eyes peering down, now were more like the eyes of merry gnomes or pixies.

The buildings which in the twilight, or even in the night time when lights fell upon them, seemed grotesque or terrible, in the light of day seemed only curiously twisted out of shape and hung out and bent inward in every conceivable fashion.

I have taken the oath that I will play this trumpet each hour, and that it is no vain oath you have learned from the story which I have just told you.

The trumpet must be played, happen what will.

Therefore”—he drew out a piece of parchment and sketched on it with a bit of charcoal a series of lines—“you are to learn by heart the notes which I sketch here.”

“No,” answered the alchemist, “although in regard to it I admit that I have much curiosity.

If it is true that all things are subject to change, then one might change from old to young as well as from young to old if one could but find the laws to reverse the process of life.

And as to this I do not doubt that a restorer of youth can be found. Yet I am not interested as are those who have lived vain lives and hope to do better it life may be relived.”

I would learn, if I might, the composition of the earth, the reasons for the spring and summer and such phenomena—I would learn what makes the stars to shine and the sea to be tempestuous.

God has given me a mind that searches ever for the light, and I feel that I am doing His will when I seek the truths that lie about us on every hand.

”

“I am sure of it”—Tring was almost dancing about his chair in eager enthusiasm—“if you will cease being a plodding scholar and a fool, and set yourself night and day to conquer this problem of the universe.

Gold—gold—gold—that is what every man wants.

Success always means gold, and those who work all their lives professing none but unselfish motives are but deceiving others in order to make themselves reverenced some of them perhaps are deceiving themselves.

The fruits of the autumn were already appearing in the market, the apples of the first bearing, the golden squashes, and the late cabbage.

And over the city and country hung a sky of deep, exquisite blue, for in all the world there is no sky so blue as is the Krakow sky, and no sun is so golden as is the sun of early autumn.

When the Month of the Heather had passed by and the Month of Hemp Beating was at hand, Joseph had learned all the notes of the Heynal and could play the little hymn upon his father’s trumpet.

“Why do they not all do that?” asked Elzbietka. “One can understand them so much better.

If I were a poet I should not think of writing in an old language that no one speaks except a few scholars. I would write of Poland and its flowers; I would write of the trumpeter in the tower and the blue sky that one sees behind the castle on Wawel Hill.

Truly, I like this New Learning as you call it.”

“And,” she continued, “why is not this learning as good for women as it is for men?

Why is it that all writings of poets and scholars and men of learning should be read only by men?

I would read such writings, too.”

“Oh-ho-hum!” he yawned.

Such a quiet thing was life!

But—flattened against the church wall behind him was one whose intention might have disturbed those weary thoughts had the watchman been able to discern it.

. . . The little bed is always yours. . . . We, too, are greatly troubled as well, as perhaps you know. Pan Andrew has not been the same since that accursed night. . . .

Yet if one had but sense, we have here all that should make man happy: children, love, bread, and a house—why must men be always sighing and striving for that which they have not?

”

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.

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.

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 …

“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.

”

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.

In the section about the old university the majority of dwellings were very ancient, dry, and cobwebbed everywhere, and a single spark upon their roofs was enough to turn them in exceedingly rapid fashion into belching furnaces of flame and smoke.

As the fire raced through these streets, the inhabitants poured out in panic-stricken confusion; each building was literally teeming with life, and the whole scene, viewed from above, would have resembled a huge ant hill suddenly destroyed or burned out by a careful gardener.

Women and children came out rushing and shrieking. Black-robed students dashed through the streets with manuscripts and parchments in their hands; others came carrying glass tubes or astrolabes or metal dividers;

It no longer stands apart, a monument visible from afar as of old—other palaces and buildings have shut it in, and one sees its towers only, until one is close upon it. Then the sudden magnificence leaps upon the visitor.

A splendid silence lurking in its high roof descends suddenly like the thousands of pigeons that thunder down for particles of bread.

Beneath one’s feet is the old city cemetery; there on the walls are the tablets and shrines; there at the south doorway are the iron collars that once clasped the throats of petty criminals as they stood supplicating the prayers and pennies of the faithful.