Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/149

Rh could only go somewhere as a shop-girl, for of household work she knew absolutely nothing. Valerie declared positively that something would turn up, and that she was glad that Vlasta, anyhow, would get away from that life. And as it often happens that when a man is himself on dry land, he tries to help another from the water by plans and advice at least, so we both began to arrange Valerie's life by our "ifs" and "perhapses." But she shook her head, stood up, gave us her hand, and with the words: "I'll manage somehow, children, to drag my battered life along," she went to bed.

In broad daylight I went out, reached home, took my Xenophon, my grammar, my exercise-books and made my way to school.

In the afternoon I tied my books up in a parcel, and took them to the second-hand bookseller's; a quarter of an hour later I made a journey with a second parcel. Palacký, Šafařík, Svatopluk Čech, Jirásek, Hellwald, Vrchlický, Arbes, Třebizský, and many others were priced by Taussig, Pascheles, and Alexander Storch. Ah, how lightly these leading figures of our literature were priced! Pascheles, on the Velké Staroměstské Náměstí, was the only one who paid at all reasonably

In those two days I felt as if I had shaken off the burden of Raskolnikov's "human louse." My life seemed to have suddenly gained content, 10