THE WITCH OF PRAGUE

A FANTASTIC TALE

By F. Marion Crawford




CHAPTER I

A great multitude of people filled the church, crowded together in
the old black pews, standing closely thronged in the nave and aisles,
pressing shoulder to shoulder even in the two chapels on the right and
left of the apse, a vast gathering of pale men and women whose eyes
were sad and in whose faces was written the history of their nation. The
mighty shafts and pilasters of the Gothic edifice rose like the stems of
giant trees in a primeval forest from a dusky undergrowth, spreading out
and uniting their stony branches far above in the upper gloom. From the
clerestory windows of the nave an uncertain light descended halfway to
the depths and seemed to float upon the darkness below as oil upon the
water of a well. Over the western entrance the huge fantastic organ
bristled with blackened pipes and dusty gilded ornaments of colossal
size, like some enormous kingly crown long forgotten in the lumber
room of the universe, tarnished and overlaid with the dust of ages.
Eastwards, before the rail which separated the high altar from the
people, wax torches, so thick that a man might not span one of them with
both his hands, were set up at irregular intervals, some taller, some
shorter, burning with steady, golden flames, each one surrounded with
heavy funeral wreaths, and each having a tablet below it, whereon were