his bidding. All this did not prevent his enjoyment of the king's
favor. Sigismund had married, against his mother's wish, Barbara
Radziwill, the beautiful daughter of a Polish magnate. The nobles,
probably influenced by Bona, the mother of the king, demanded that
Barbara should be repudiated: he indignantly refused, and shortly
afterward she was poisoned. The grief and rage of Sigismund were
without bounds: he exiled his mother, wore black all the rest of his
life, and had the apartments of his palace hung with it. His melancholy
gave him new interest in the occult sciences, and he became more than
ever intimate with Twardowsky, sometimes visiting him in his cavern,
sometimes receiving him secretly in his palace. At first, he was
satisfied with the chemical experiments which the populace regarded as
supernatural, but after a while he urgently desired Twardowsky to
produce for him a vision of Barbara. Twardowsky appointed a night for
the exhibition of his skill, and after drawing a magic circle and
pronouncing some mysterious words, he called Barbara thrice by name, and
she appeared--not as a spectre risen from the tomb, but in all the
beauty and freshness which had been the king's delight. He fainted at
the sight, and his regard for the magician increased greatly. But one
fatal evening he found the door of the cavern shut. Twardowsky, not
expecting him, was not there. After some delay the door was opened by a
beautiful young woman. "Barbara!" exclaimed Sigismund. "Barbara is my
name, but I am alive, not dead," was her reply. Twardowsky's device was
now exposed. He had created an illusion for the satisfaction of
Sigismund by employing this substitute for his lost Barbara. She was a
girl named Barbara Gisemka, whom Twardowsky had rescued from the hands
of a furious mob, had concealed in his cavern, and initiated into the
sciences to which he devoted himself. She became his adept and his
mistress. But the king, furious at the imposition which had been
practiced upon him, and desirous of making this beautiful creature his
own, had Twardowsky murdered, and gave out that the devil had carried
him off. Barbara Gisemka acquired immense influence over the mind of her
royal lover, which lasted while he lived. When he was ill she suffered
no physician to approach him, and was with him when he died in 1572.

So much for history. Tradition has transformed Twardowsky into a gay and
brilliant gentleman, who, in order to gain all the p