The Drunkard Wenceslaus' Second Wife

The shamble leg man--who could not wear tap-shoes--found the idea fascinating. He liked the idea of metal-clasps and ticking, sharp noise and tapping. Of course the sandblindness of his own legs precluded him from wearing tap-shoes, but thinking about them was something he was fond of doing, thinking about tap-shoes and clicking, tap-tapping and metal-clasps. The drunkard Wenceslaus of Wenzel Venceslao wore wool-hew culottes and a Scottish tam. After his marriage to Žofie Bavorská, the second cousin of his first wife Johanna of Bavaria, Wenceslaus changed to knee-britches and a guncotton flat-board hat. The shamble leg man read this in a back-copy of Bohemia Weekly, a gift from the harridan’s sister on the occasion of his fifty-ninth birthday. He read much that was of little utility, small meaningless things, things that most people found dull and uninspiring. He often fantasized about the drunkard Wenceslaus’ wife, not the second wife, Žofie Bavorská, but the first wife, Johanna of Bavaria, who saw nothing inappropriate in her husband’s choice to wear wool-hew culottes and a Scottish tam.