truth. Polish historians are hardly fair in
ignoring the story. Though it turn out to have been a wild prank, it has
some historical justification. Such practical jokes are not unusual in
Polish history. Readers of that history will recall the _Respublika
Babinska_, that society of practical jokers which drew up royal
charters, and issued patents of nobility. A Polish nobleman had founded
the society in the sixteenth century, its membership being open only to
those distinguished as wits. It perpetrated the oddest political jokes,
appointing spendthrifts as overseers of estates, and the most
quarrelsome as justices of the peace. With such proclivities, Polish
factions, at loggerheads with each other, can easily be imagined uniting
to crown a Jew, the most harmless available substitute for a real king.

Our last and strongest witness--one compelling the respectful attention
of the severest court and the most incisive attorney general--is the
Russian professor Berschadzky, the author of an invaluable work on the
history of the Jews in Lithuania. He vouches, not indeed for the
authenticity of the events related by Rabbi Pinchas, but for the reality
of Saul Wahl himself. From out of the Russian archives he has been
resurrected by Professor Berschadzky, the first to establish that Saul
was a man of flesh and blood.[74] He reproduces documents of
incontestable authority, which report that Stephen Bathori, in the year
1578, the third of his reign, awarded the salt monopoly for the whole of
Poland to Saul Juditsch, that is, Saul the Jew. Later, upon the payment
of a high security, the same Saul the Jew became farmer of the imposts.
In 1580, his name, together with the names of the heads of the Jewish
community of Brzesc, figures in a lawsuit instituted to establish the
claim of the Jews upon the fourth part of all municipal revenues. He
rests the claim on a statute of Grandduke Withold, and the verdict was
favorable to his side. This was the time of the election of Bathori's
successor, Sigismund III., and after his accession to the throne, Saul
Juditsch again appears on the scene. On February 11, 1588, the king
issued the following notice: "Some of our councillors have recommended
to our attention the punctilious business management of Saul Juditsch,
of the town of Brzesc, who, on many occasions during the reigns of our
predecessors, served the crown by his wide experience in matters
pertaining to duties, taxes, and divers reven