Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/273

 here it pretty often came to pass that Bartos wept; just as if he had only then laid the corpse in the grave. Generally this exhumation concluded thus, “It is not well with thee down there; they have patched thee together but poorly. Alas! I fear thou wilt not hold together much longer.” After this he touched the corpse, which thereupon fell to pieces into bones and a few Iclods of earth.

This man, just as he was compassionate towards the dead, was yet a hundred times more so towards the living. There was no grief for which he did not feel compassion, there was no misfortune which ever failed to touch his heart. But it was not perhaps the spurious compassion which is assumed to win general admiration; rather was it the compassion which, if possible without parade and bustle, is succeeded by compassionate deeds.

Once they brought a coffin to the burial-ground slovenly nailed together. No one followed it to the grave save one little girl three years of age. In the coffin lay a kind of a servant-girl—they called her Katchka. She was an illegitimate child, and the little girl who followed her to the grave was also illegitimate. How could any honest soul come to such a funeral?

For the nonce, Bartos had to play the priest. He repeated a few prayers over the grave, and when the little one wept over the coffin, he said, “Sprinkle it, little one, sprinkle it: maminka will sleep the lighter; for the tears of a child are the fairest waters of purification.” When he wished to lower the coffin into the grave he saw that there was to help him only one servant who had driven the dead Katchka in an open-ribbed wagon. “Is there no one here but thee?” inquired Bartos angrily.

“And who, then, would come to the funeral of such a ”, said the servant, and leered in a very saucy manner.

After this Bartos was silent, and filled in the grave over the corpse. When the grave was filled in, the little girl plaintively lamented that she had no one to go to, and that no one wanted her in the village.

“And why does no one want her”, asked Bartos of the servant.

“And who, then, would trouble his head about her, about such a”, said the servant again, and once more leered in the same saucy way.

“What dost thou mean by ‘such a one', thou boor!” retorted Bartos on the servant. “Did any other than He who created thee, create her? Wilt thou make thyself her judge, because she came