Page:The grandmother; a story of country life in Bohemia.pdf/17

Rh home she continued her reading, borrowing books from the castle library.

Her life at home was quiet, but full of ideals and aspirations. She looked forward to the future as to a new world that had wondrous treasures in store for her.

But her dreams were cut short by her marriage, in 1837, to Joseph Nemec, an officer of finance in Kosteletz. It was a marriage without love, entered into at the wish of her father. How she regarded this step may be judged from her own words.

"The years of my girlhood were the most beautiful of my life. When I married I wept over my lost liberty, over the dreams and beautiful ideals forever ruined Woman's heart is like wax, every picture is easily impressed; but what does it all avail? Now everything seems to me pale, tame, and cold, and lead seems to course through my veins. I could weep over myself, when I consider my condition."

Although Madame Nemec looked upon her marriage as entirely unhappy, it was not without some redeeming features. Her husband was a very estimable man, beloved of many friends. He was, moreover, a man of culture, an ardent patriot, and had his wife been an ordinary woman they might have lived happily together. But what she lost in her marriage she tried to make up in her literary life.

While Madame Nemec had always taken a deep interest in all things pertaining to her country, and her early education had been in the Bohemian language, she knew nothing of the literature of her native land until the family moved to Polna, where she became acquainted with the writings of Tyl. She had already written some tales, and now, roused by patriotic enthusiasm, she composed the beautiful poem, To the Bohemian Women. This and several other poems and tales gained her much popularity, so that when, in 1841, the family moved to Prague, she was received with open arms into the circle of young