The Picture That Could Not Be Approached

A small picture of the Virgin Mary with the inscription Ecce ancilla Domini, that is, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, was brought here from Karlov in 1785. The following is told of it. It had been the inherited property of the painter Monn in the house At the Black Elephant, and Monn's forebears used to carry it with them even on their travels. Once, it is said, the painter was visited by the famous violinist Josef Slavík, called in his day the Bohemian Paganini, who set a chair against the wall to look at the picture; but the chair tipped over beneath him three times. He went therefore to holy confession, and only then could he approach the picture. The painter, seeing that strange power of the picture, resolved to give it to the first priest he should meet — and that was a priest from Karlov, and so the picture came to Karlov. Slavík's dates of course contradict this, unless it was some other Slavík in the seventeenth century.