Page:Heavens!.djvu/114

 had done a particularly good deed, he used to say to himself, “Neducha would surely approve of that.” In short, Neducha was his hero in everything, and he surrounded him with a halo of friendship and love.

How great was his pleasure, then, when the messenger handed him the letter! He broke the seal hastily, that he might enjoy his friend’s words without delay. But he read and read again and again; he could not believe his eyes. He turned deadly pale, and trembled visibly. The contents of the letter stunned him!

Father Neducha wrote that he had heard things about him which troubled his mind so much that for two nights he had not been able to close his eyes in sleep. When he had got the account, or from whom, he did not say, he had probably forgotten it in the trouble of his mind. Furthermore, that he (Neducha) had broken, long ago all the ties that bound him to this world; in one only of them all had he still indulged—in the love to his old tried friend Václav. And now, even in this he must say that all he had found in the things of earthly life and friendship was—vanity of vanities. The account he had heard, wrenched these severe words from him. Then he entered into the pith of the matter itself, and wrote in his dry but cutting way, that he had got the fully guaranteed report that Cvok, who had been a just man before God for fifty years of his life, had succumbed to the snares of the enemy, and conceived a condemnable passion for some companion in the Castle of Labutín, that he harboured the fruit of this passion openly in his own dwelling, to the scandal and temptation of the souls God had committed to his charge; that Cvok not only did not repent of his perjury and abominable offence, but