Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/226

 The tendency ran towards spiritualistic communism, but at this time more from feeling than definitely expressed principle. A gay throng filled the castle, where all were welcome; and the dance and the song, and the wine cup spread and expressed the universal tribute of felicitation. Messages from surrounding magnates arrived; and among others after a day or two, came one with much ceremony from the palace at Prague. Wenzel expressed his own and the queen’s hearty congratulations. Zawis in reply dispatched a special embassy most respectfully inviting the king and queen to Fürstenberg on the occasion of the baptism of his son. Zawis and the Lady Judith also ordered the preparation of costly presents, some of which should consist of Judith’s own handiwork, ananufactured from the finest materials imported from Spain and patterned after the extremely delicate textile fabrics and intricate patterns still produced by the Arab lace-weavers of the peninsula. These exquisite productions rivaled the most filmy material, and the most complicated and yet regular figurings of the Chinese silks, or the brilliant complications of the subtle intellect of Hindostan.

The glorious supremacy of Bohemia over the Indian traffic through Hungary, between 1262 and 1276, by way of the Adriatic, had furnished many splendid samples of these fabrics to the baronial palaces; and one of the most grievous injuries to Bohemia committed by the Habsburgs consisted in the annihilation not only of this trade, but of the manufactures that it introduced and the taste that it educated.