Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/250

 to take care of a deserted child, the son of a detested father, and of a mother equally detested for the sake of the same fair and noble deed to tear to pieces and fling to the winds all theories, personal crotchets, hatred, and distaste—name to me anything more sublime and more honourable—I know of none, and let your heroes rant and declaim from the boards I know not how far to your satisfaction—Poldik the scavenger can boldly place himself beside any of them, and stand on a level even with the most favoured.

He hated the scavenger’s business from the very bottom of his soul, and now he walked once more beside his cart with sand and led by the hand the son of Francis, called Francis like his father; he instilled into him a love for a calling for which he himself felt no love; he pointed out to him its advantages, though he himself knew of none; he was silent about its disadvantages of which he could count so large a number.

But he adapted himself to it once again. He still continued to exercise his trade in horses, not, however, to the same extent as formerly, but only like an artist, when he felt an inclination to do so.

But now, as day by day with little Francis he rolled out his “hee! hee!” and “heesta!” alongside his vehicle he felt delighted when the boy first caught up the cry, and then he taught the little fellow to say “cl! cl!” and to shout at the horses, and he felt enormous delight when Francis’s first oath tripped off his tongue in the true Poldikian style. He already began to settle down to scavenging and it began to please him.

And now his horses again halted at the ale-house, at the blacksmith’s, the fruiterer’s and the tobacconist’s, only they were And then different horses and rather brisker than the old ones. And then there was a different landlord at the ale-house, at the blacksmith’s forge a different blacksmith, at Naplavka also an almost completely different set of sandsmen and wherrymen—most of them the result of his own careful training. And what immeasurable astonishment was exhibited at the stations when Poldik appeared with his vehicle once more, although if he chose he might have driven his own coach—we can imagine for ourselves.

The people were completely puzzled to know whether he was an eccentricity or whether he was not, and in the ale-house several times in the week we might have heard the following conversation:—