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 mountains and valleys and through dense forests led to a hamlet which contained a chapel anda parsonage. To the priest of that place, who was called the Hlohov chaplain, was assigned the duty of serving holy mass in the chapel of the Palace on the first Sunday of each month, for the peace and rest of the ancestors of Count Francis Václav, and also the duty of teaching the gospel to the servants’ children.

Only a few were they who knew that in the center of those black woods stretching from the boundary line far into the interior, there was concealed an old ruin, and it seemed that even its owners had forgotten it. Count Francis Václav had been at Hlohov for the last time when his father was placed in the crypt, and after that no member of the Count’s family had been seen there. The lonely situation of the Castle touched the worldly Count so deeply that he shuddered at the thought of awaiting resurrection in that wilderness. He therefore built another vault on one of his estates near Prague, in the