inly it was not the sage Libussa, but the people, as indeed is
frequently the case. The land of Bohemia had nominally a duke, but in
point of fact the government remained in a female hand as before.
Premislas was a perfect pattern of a docile obedient husband, who did
not dispute the rule of his wife, either in the household or the state.
His thoughts and wishes sympathised as perfectly with her own, as two
similarly tuned strings, of which the untouched one spontaneously
repeats the sound, which the louder one has uttered. Libussa had not,
however, the proud, vain disposition of those ladies who wish to pass
for great matches, and are always superciliously reminding the poor
wight, whose fortune they think they have made, of his wooden shoes;
but she imitated the celebrated Queen of Palmyra, and governed by the
superiority of her talents, as Zenobia managed her good-natured
Odenatus.

The happy pair lived in the enjoyment of unchanging love, according to
the fashion of that time, when the instinct which unites hearts was as
firm and durable as the cement and mortar which renders the walls of
the old world so firm and indestructible. Duke Premislas now became
one of the most doughty knights of his age, and the Bohemian court one
of the most brilliant in Germany. A large number of knights and
nobles, as well as a great concourse of common people gradually
assembled from all parts of the territory. The consequence was, that
the court-city became too narrow for the inhabitants, and therefore
Libussa called her people in office to her, and ordered them to build a
city on the spot where they should find a man who knew how to make the
wisest use of teeth at noon. They went out and found at the appointed
time a man who was busied in sawing a block asunder. They decided that
this industrious person made an incomparably better use of the teeth of
his saw at noon than the parasite made of the teeth in his jaws at the
table of the great, and they did not doubt that they had found the
place which the princess had appointed for the foundation of the new
city. They therefore drew the ploughshare round the field to mark the
compass of the city wall. On asking the working man what he intended
to make out of the piece of wood he was cutting, he answered: "Prah,"
which in the Bohemian tongue signifies the threshold of a door.
Libussa therefore called the new city Praha, that is Prague, the
well-known royal city on the Moldau in