During his first few days in Warsaw, Edward had taken him to see all the city’s beloved monuments to the past. Ignace returned to them again and again, dreaming as he had dreamed from his childhood of the day when his country would be reborn. He liked to walk by the great yellow Zamek, once the royal palace of the kings of Poland. In the palace square stood the noble bronze figure of King Sigismond III, who held a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. Like every other Polish boy, Ignace knew the prophecy that had grown up around the statue: “When Sigismond shakes his sword,” the old folks said, “then Poland will be free again!” How many times Ignace went to the square to stare, fascinated, at the statue. Yet the king held his bronze sword rigid and immobile, and it seemed unlikely that he would ever be able to shake it in the name of freedom. Near the Zamek, in a triangle of fresh green trees, was the shrine of the Mother of Sorrows. The heroic King John Sobieski had built it two hundred years before and dedicated it to “the Queen of Poland.” It was here that the boy knelt most often to pray for the liberation of his country and for his own future. Another favorite spot was the seventeenth century Church of the Holy Cross, a spot particularly dear to the people of Warsaw. In its crypt was buried the heart of Chopin, and as young Paderewski saw it for the first time, he must have felt as many Poles had felt before him that the heart of Poland itself was buried in this holy spot. “Where your treasure is,” read the inscription over the shrine, “there shall your heart be also.” Although Ignace was a serious boy and a tireless student, he had an incurable streak of mischief in him. In Warsaw, for the first time, he had a real opportunity to exercise it. At home, he had never had any playmates but his older sister, and a boy’s older sister is hardly the ideal playmate. But now the rather shy country lad blossomed out and became a favorite among his young fellow students. They called him “Squirrel,” in honor of his quick ways and his bright red hair. (Polish squirrels are not gray, but red.) He soon became the ringleader in most of the pranks that went on in the stately corridors of the Conservatory. He also became an expert in the art of playing practical jokes on the older, more dignified students, who frequently called him several names other than “Squirrel.”