Page:Heavens!.djvu/27

 your settling your book account now, and in future as well, with potatoes.’ ‘It is a bargain,’ I said, as we shook hands upon it. And now I reap from my fields not only potatoes, but also books.”

“It would have been wiser,” observed Ledecký, “if you had brought your potatoes to the market and sold them there. There’s nothing like cash. And then, as we are talking about it at all, I must tell you that your constant poring over books is bringing you into bad repute with the clergy. They think that you are a rationalist. If you please, how could you forget yourself so far, at the Church feast of Radesín, as to praise Voltaire up to the skies before the faces of so many brother-priests? I was playing cards at a little distance from you, and only half heard your argumentation; but you vexed the vicar very much; and who knows what might have happened if we had not talked him over, and made him think you had taken a drop too much , and did not know what you were saying?”

“I was as sober as a jug of water,” said Father Cvok, defending himself. “And, indeed , I did not praise Voltaire up to the skies at all. I maintained, on the contrary, that he was a filthy egoist, a treacherous, deceiving fellow, impudent and violent in his attacks, full of hatred and bitterness, and that his powerful wit consisted only of icy sarcasm. But I did say that, in spite of all this human dross and dirt, he was undoubtedly a great genius, and from the beginning to the end of his philosophy kept to the belief in a personal God, and the immortality of the soul. When, shortly before his death, Franklin paid him a visit in Paris, he laid his right hand upon the head of his grandchild, and said, blessing him, ‘God and liberty;’ and to Baron Holbach he wrote ‘Not to