The wicked Wenzel didn’t go to, as you will presently see. He went nap. Soon afterwards, at a royal dinner-party, a capon came up, and the King got a slice from the breast that was slightly underdone. Whereupon, in a rage, he seized the capon, hurled it on the floor, and jumped upon it. (I fancy he suffered with his liver, this Wenzel, and was subject to neurotic blizzards.) Then he sent for the cook and had him spitted alive and roasted in front of his kitchen fire. ‘And see that he is better done than this capon,’ was the King’s final instruction to the cookers of the cook.
The Rev. Mr. Nepomuk, when he heard of this, gave the King a piece of his mind, for which impertinence he was put into prison, and, while there, the King sent for him and said, ‘Now, my friend, are you going to tell me what the Queen confessed?’ ‘Certainly not, sire,’ replied Nepomuk, although, after what had happened to the cook, he guessed his refusal would get him into trouble. It did. Every effort of the King having failed to shake the determination of the rev. gentleman, he was one day seized by soldiers, bound hand and foot, and flung over the big bridge into the Moldau.
King Wenzel fancied no one would know what had become of Nepomuk; but a miracle happened. When the rev. gentleman fell into the water the water retired, and the bed of the river was dry for three days. The body was recovered, and to-day it is in a glass coffin enclosed in a solid silver one in the cathedral on the Hradshin. The saint has moreover in the cathedral a solid silver monument, and silver angels holding golden lamps of immense value hover over his shrine. I shall not forget that silver monument for many a long day. I was so entranced with it that I let the Californian-Bohemian tell me stories about Nepomuk that would have caused the Marines to shake their heads, and it wasn’t until he had called me ‘honyrabble zir’ for the fourteenth time that at last I took his arm and led him limping away.
Ever since this occasion St. Nepomuk has been the patron saint of bridges (he was canonized by Benedict XIII.), and in Bohemia and some parts of Austria his fête-day is kept with the wildest rejoicings. Oddly enough, though the people of Prague always sing ‘St. Nepomuk, protect me’ when they cross a bridge, the bridge from which he was thrown—the glorious Karlsbrücke—- was broken down, and the middle of it carried away, by the great floods of 1890. A wooden bridge does duty while the grand old structure is being rebuilt. As I crossed the portion of the old stone bridge which is still standing I saw a huge gilt altar, erected almost at the point where the arches have been swept away. It was surrounded by hundreds of lamps, and mighty banks of flowers were piled around it. This was the altar to St. Nepomuk, which was being prepared for May 16. On that day thousands of pilgrims come from all parts of Bohemia to visit the bridge, and do honour to the saint. This year they found that the patron saint of bridges had allowed his own bridge to come to grief.
This St. Nepomuk Day in Prague is something you must see to understand. The streets are a dense mass of gay revellers and happy pilgrims from dawn till midnight. All the quaint national costumes of Bohemia light up the beflagged and beflowered thoroughfares. All day long the merry lads and lasses sing Bohemian songs, and dance Bohemian dances in the streets, the squares, and the parks. At night fireworks blaze up from all parts of the town, and a million extra lights make the glorious city on the Moldau a never-to-be-forgotten spectacle.
I lingered in Prague for the fête of St. Nepomuk, and I saw a sight which I shall remember all my days without referring either to notebook or diary. Good old St. Nepomuk! If he had not been thrown over the Karlsbrücke I should not have seen the Bohemian national fête. King Wenzel, I owe you one!
The National Theatre in Prague, where only plays and operas in the Czechish language are performed, is one of the finest in Europe. I saw there a Czechish opera entitled ‘Prodaná Nevěsta,’ or ‘The Sold Bride.’ At the ‘Národni Divadlo,’ or National Theatre, the operas are staged in a manner which excites the admiration even of our own Sir Augustus, and the chorus works as I have never seen a chorus work before. Everybody enters into the business of the scene, and fills it up, and the illusion is absolutely perfect.
As they thought it worth while to make an exhibition of theatrical programmes at the Vienna Exhibition, I may as well give you a little bit of a Prague programme (no charge), just to show you how it looks. Here is the one for which in a private box I paid ten kreuzers, and which an old lady obligingly stuck on to the velvet with a pin to prevent its falling over.
PRODANÁ NEVĚSTA.
Komická zpěvohra o třech jednáních. Hudbu složil
Bedřich Smetana. Slova od K. Sabiny.
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