Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/195

 it of the shrubs, that waterfall, the moss, and those fir-trees―and you have a dwelling-place for wolves.

To Vojtech it appeared that the Horskas were the cause of all his misfortune. Why had they awakened in him a passion for life? Why had they drawn him out of the depths into the light of day, only that he might then feel he was flung to the abyss? He hated them. Vojtech gloated over that word “hatred” and when that hatred had entered into his heart he wept. He saw all the flowers of life scattered and even their roots torn from the ground. In every root gaped a wound and Vojtech was glad that there was no one left to heal them. Blood flowed, and Vojtech observed with horrid tranquillity how as it flowed it congealed.

Any one who should have felt apprehensive from his previous career that he would abandon himself to drink and gambling, would have been mistaken. Even these amusements soon palled upon him and Vojtech remained locked within himself like a ark chamber into which only through the keyhole struggle a few poor rays of light. He who is alone within himself feels oppressed and Vojtech was alone. He began to live an uninquiring life, and what is life without the zest of inquiry?

He was well aware of all this. He felt how he had fallen. He was no longer fit for teaching, and yet to communicate his ideas was still a necessity to him. He felt the humiliation of his destiny and yet took no steps to raise himself. Why should he? Again to lose his foothold and to be humiliated afresh?

In lonely hours there sometimes flits across our mind something that seems to us as though it flapped against our forehead—when we turn our eyes to follow it, lo! it beckons to us with its finger. Vojtech’s eyes also seemed to follow some such finger and when he had looked upon it for a long time and saw a hand join itself to the finger, a breast to the hand, a neck, head, eyes-behold! it was Lidunka. In the midst of our dim presentiments there at times arises something like a clearly defined visage: we cannot express it in words but it seems to us as though something had breathed warm upon us, and that our life need not be a wasted one. We open and shut our eyes and the light dazzles us.

It was a maddening prelude thought Vojtech. Why should Lidunka beckon to him when he had been repudiated on her account? But the longer he looked at the vision, the softer grew his heart and when its eyes met his, he seemed to see tears falling from them. He shook the vision from his mind as we shake rime