gilt cup; Klee fell, and left the good monks with
their books, just carrying off the trifling tokens they had given him as
souvenirs. A little kindness goes a long way.

In St. Thomas's there is also a painting ascribed to Rubens over the
altar. It looks doubtful to me, but the light was bad, and I could form
no opinion as to the picture's merit. Another painting in this church
gave me a thrill, a Virgin and Child, both black! I hoped that at last I
had discovered a picture I had heard so much of, "The Black Madonna"--a
famous picture with a stirring history. There are said to have been
several "Black Madonnas" in Bohemia at one time, and that of Stara
Boleslav was the most precious of them. St. Ludmilla herself had given
this picture to her pious grandson Wenceslaus, who, as we know, was
murdered at Stara Boleslav. Podiwin, the most trusty henchman of
Wenceslaus, buried this treasure when his master was murdered. You could
not well let it fall into the hands of Brother Boleslav, the hefty
heathen; he would have been incapable of appreciating the beautiful
legend of how the young mother, filled with anxiety on the flight into
Egypt, prayed that she and her Child might be turned black while their
exile lasted. The picture was found again in 1160 by a ploughman; the
Saxons, on their raid into Bohemia in 1635, stole it, and Ferdinand II
redeemed it and brought it back to Prague. It should be somewhere in
this city. I will leave the search for it to you, when you pay your
visit to Prague, which is surely inevitable now that you have read so
far in this book.

A tall, very thin spire, that peers up near the mass of the Nicholas
Church, reminds me of others of British race, who had their day in
Prague and, I feel sure, contributed to its reputation for religion and
piety. These were the _Englische Fraeulein_, as the German chronicler
calls them; this means English virgins or maidens--you cannot very well
call them English misses--whose Order, founded by Clara Ward in the
seventeenth century, was introduced into Prague in the eighteenth by a
Princess Auersberg. I am not sure how these ladies passed their time,
nor what their object was in life, but no doubt they maintained that
state to which they considered themselves called, and this alone should
be accounted unto them for righteousness in a gay town like Prague.

There is yet one other Briton of whom I must tell you in connection with
the story of old Prague. His name is