EPILOGUE: THE BROKEN NOTE
It is the year 1926. The Vistula River now no longer turns at the Wawel Hill and plunges straight through the Krakow plain, dividing the city of Kazimierz from the city of Krakow, but instead swings far to the left and surrounds the whole plain, now the new city. The castles and towers and cathedral of the Wawel still rise proudly on the hill, as in former days; St. Andrew's, which has defied fire, siege, and war for eight centuries, raises its head—two towers—above Grodzka Street; the old Cloth Hall, beautified during the Renaissance, still stands in the middle of the central Rynek. And although the glory of former days is departed from the city and kings no longer sit in the castle on the hill, there has come with the years the growth of a new glory, the glory of culture as seen in the university of fourteenth-century origin, in the schools of fine arts and music and handicraft and trade. From all Poland come students to study and to live in this venerable city, which is Gothic in every corner and every gable save where here and there a bit of Romanesque wall or arch has survived the Tartar, or the Cossack, or the Swede.
But the chief glory of the city is the Church of Our Lady Mary. 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 magnificenceleaps 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. Inside, the church is a veritable miracle of beauty. Above its exquisite wood carvings and choir rises a vaulted roof of sky blue, studded with stars. Images of stone look down from breaks in the Gothic fluting—tablets, banners, altars, shrines—all strike alike upon the sight in amazing beauty.
But listen: is the organ playing? Whence come those notes that float down from above like God's own music from heaven? They come from the towers, for the hour is striking on the bell, and a trumpeter is playing at one of the open tower windows. And that tune? It is the Heynal, the same tune played by a young man so many centuries ago, when the Tartars burned the city—and listen, the trumpeter breaks off his song in the middle of a note.... Four times he sounds the Heynal, once at each of the four windows, west, south, east, north. And many a man or woman or child on hearing that song thinks of the days when the young life was given to country and God and duty.... Poland has been through many fires since that time—she has had centuries of war, a century of extinction. But in all that time the Heynal has sounded with each passing hour and men have sworn each year to keep the custom unto the very end of time. Hark, it is sounding now.
May it bring in an epoch of peace to all men!
END OF BOOK
