change of air. One of these towers soon found a lodger, one
Dalibor after whom the tower was named for ever after. There is an opera
all about Dalibor composed by Smetana; the music is very beautiful, but
as the singing is all in Czech, I have not quite got the hang of the
story, so will give as nearly as I can and by the aid of my own
imagination, what happened to Dalibor.

Dalibor, it appears, was a Bohemian knight with views in advance of his
time: he was a socialist. One day he assembled his friends, relatives
and retainers in the castle yard and appeared among them armed and on
horseback. He dismounted and commenced proceedings by scraping off his
shield the heraldic emblems with which it was charged. Lions and bears,
rampant, couchant, gardant, and other fauna in becoming attitudes,
bends, bars, engrailed, dancetty, raguly, gules, azure, argent or
otherwise--all these things of beauty vanished from Dalibor's scutcheon
while the assembled multitude wondered "What next?" Thereupon Dalibor
held forth, in impressive manner and impassioned tones, on the iniquity
of the system, the inequality of condition, under which they were all
forced to exist. Having made his assembled fellow-men his equals by
removing the aforesaid heraldic devices, he would further show his sense
of equality by leading them in person and on foot to real freedom; so
said Dalibor. Thereupon the multitude, at Dalibor's heels, set off down
the hill and started spreading equality all around them. Their method
was quite simple, indeed it lacked originality: they just helped
themselves to the goods of those who happened to live by the way. Those
who failed to rise to this lofty conception of Dalibor and his comrades
were knocked on the head--also quite a simple and homely method of
appeal; and so this happy band of pilgrims left behind them a dead-level
of equality. These their efforts at social regeneration, their
illustration of economic principles, were not appreciated. Dalibor was
captured and invited to take up his residence beneath the trap-door of
the tower that was henceforth to be known by his name.

As soon as he was safely housed, Rumour, the mother of Legend, got busy
about him. Folk began to whisper to each other the news that wonderful
music was heard proceeding from out of the stern walls of Dalibor's
prison; the sound of a violin was heard by the many who were attracted
to the spot by Rumour. No doubt Dalibor learnt to play the violin: