Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/221



HE present chronicler now appeals to August Sedlaček, Joseph Pekař, and other authorities on the writing of history, in support of the statement that a vast amount of historical knowledge can be drawn from purely local happenings. They mirror world events as in a drop of water.

Well, then, the drop of water entitled Hradec Králové is memorable to the chronicler because he used to race about in it like a tiny organism, as an infusorian of the grammar school there, and not surprisingly thought it the universe; but enough of that.

The Greatest War found Hradec Králové armed with only a single Karburator, and that was in the brewery still standing to this day behind the Church of the Holy Spirit, which is next to the residence of the Canons. Perhaps it was this hallowed environment which reacted on the Absolute in such a way that it began to brew a plentiful and ardently Catholic beer and thereby brought the citizens of Hradec to a condition in which the deceased Bishop Brynch would have taken sincere pleasure.