96
MAGDALEN
Nepomuk;[1] once a year, in the beautiful month of May, he is painted in a bright brown color, at the town’s expense.
A hunchbacked, crooked sidewalk runs along the rows of houses, and is intercepted by malodorons rills that flow from the dwellings, and that form a filigree stream on the common. Throughout the day an old sweeper heaps small piles of straw, dust, and dirt, but the wind, or wanton youths, regularly disperse them at nightfall.
From the common there is a beautiful view towards the west. The streets lie somewhat lower here, and one can see through them the cemetery with its chapel and its crosses, its darkling cypresses, its grave-stones, where rest in peace the heroes
- ↑ A canon of Prague in the fourteenth century, who, a pious tradition tells, was drowned by the King under the bridge of Prague for not divulging the confession of his wife, Queen Johanna. He was canonized a saint in 1729, since which time he has been regarded as the patron saint of Bohemia. Most bridges have statues of Jan of Nepomuk. Pilgrimages in his honor are made in the month of May.
