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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.
While Twardowsky, to gain time, was reading over the compact, his wife, looking over his shoulder, suddenly laughed, and addressing the devil, told him there were still three conditions for him to fulfill, on failure of which the parchment should be torn up, and asked whether she might impose them. The devil politely replied in the affirmative.
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.
Twardowsky, however, could not get down again, but remains suspended in the air, only receiving news from the earth by means of a spider which happened to be on the tail of his coat, and which occasionally spins a thread and goes down, for a while, returning with whatever it may have picked up for his information and amusement.
This is more than the devil had bargained for, or is willing to perform. He refuses; the contract is broken, and Twardowsky is saved. The story may have inspired Thackeray's amusing tale in "The Paris Sketch-book," entitled "The Painter's Bargain." For the facts in the story of the composition and production of Gounod's opera, we have the authority of the composer in his autobiography.
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.
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.
When he was ill she suffered no physician to approach him, and was with him when he died in 1572. So much for history. Twardowsky now enjoyed to the full his new power, reveling in luxury himself, and lavishing gifts and banquets on his friends. The populace also shared his generosity all the more, too, from the strange manner of it.
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.
In the Polish tale of Pan Twardowsky, built on the lines of the old legend, there is a more amusing fling at marriage. In return for the help which he is to receive, the Polish wizard has the privilege of demanding three duties of the devil. After enjoying to the full the benefits conferred by two, he commands the devil to marry Mme. Twardowska.
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