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.”