Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/242

 sometimes, on the other hand, he received every horse that came, paraded them about the court-yard to see what progress they were making, and when they were cured dispatched them to their respective masters.

There were golden times in store for Poldik’s horses after Malka had broken faith with him. That spurt of briskness which they had found so tiresome was soon expended and from horses they quickly sank again into jades. Poldik had no longer any one to whom he could boast of them, and he was angry with himself for ever having been so possessed and for having given himself so much trouble with them. They fell once more into their old measured pacing along the streets of Prague, and nothing again aroused them from their ordinary shambling walk. But after Malka and Francis were espoused with so much pomp and ceremony, Poldik could not any longer bear to see his horses and cart. He had sufficiently clear insight to perceive what an unequal contest he had waged as a scavenger with Francis the wherryman. Nor was it the fault of his intellect that he had lost, but of the commonplace loutishness with which he was saturated through and through. It appeared to him that there was nothing more despicable than his own employment; at all events he himself despised it utterly; and at that time, if he could have driven off his cart and the horses along with it on to some red-hot rock, so that no vestige of them might remain, he would have done it without a moment’s reflection.

At that time he lost all hold on realities and certainty. His horses must have been in a maze of difficulties. He began according to entirely different methods, and any one who had known his previous methods must have admitted that the new methods were none at all. What cared he now for twenty paces? What cared he now at what point he said “he!” “heesta!” at what point he said “cl! cl!”, at what point he shouted “whoa up!” when he was to belabour them with the whip and when he was to swear? He mixed and tangled all his vocabulary in careless confusion, swore where he ought to have said “heesta!”, flogged where he ought to have sworn, and said “cl!” where the horses expected the lash. Now they never dared halt of their own accord, for then he let fly at them all at once a volley of all the abusive epithets which he had in his pate, just as when wind, thunder, and raindrops come down pell-mell together. The horses now walked past the ale-house and the tobacconist and the fruit stall and the other noteworthy snuggeries in those quarters as though they were de-