Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/110

 They led her to a by-street. There they entered a low house and groping in the dark through a narrow court, reached at length a door by which they entered. Karla found herself in a chamber blackened with soot and rendered yet more gloomy by the faint glimmer of an oil-lamp. The lamp stood on a barrel-organ which squeaked an accompaniment to the song of an old man and a young boy. Some beggars who had already collected here repeated in chorus the whole stanza after the two singers.

The atmosphere was oppressive, a large fire burnt in the fireplace, and on the range food of various kinds was cooking. Beggars male and female kept pouring in and though the chamber was sufficiently spacious the benches were already crowded, and those who could not find seats sat or stretched themselves on the ground. Tables in the chamber there were none. Each new-comer threw his little bag with the alms he had collected into a corner, where to use their own words they made their “charity muck-heap”—they had lugged it about enough for that day, they said.

The new-comers all removed their disguises. The blind unbound the bandages from their eyes, the dumb found their tongues, the cripples divested themselves of their splints, compresses were torn from wounds and crutches thrown aside. Among beggars truth is of small account—a lie is to them, they said, what orders are in the breast of the great—a symbol of merit among a long suffering people.

Soon their dissipated natures displayed themselves. Old or young gathered into a circle, curses and the laughter of despair issued from every mouth. Words of double meaning were heard on all sides. Misery here celebrated its orgies and gorged itself with food and drink, here drunkenness and debauchery showed themselves undisguised.

There is something tragical in the revelry of misery. Only in this utterly unbridled licence is it possible for us to see whether society has not sinned in all its grades, by shutting itself completely against them and by making the result of its struggles inaccessible to them. What has the world for the beggar that, while he is in it, he should preserve and develop the human part of himself? Law does not defend him and all that you glory in has value only when he is excepted. He alone sinks to the level of a beast, you wed him to his vileness and, therefore, when he thinks of his fate the beast in him triumphs over the man. It is possible that he is aware of his degradation: but out of these dungeons