Page:Our Grandfather by Vítězslav Hálek (1887).pdf/78

 mon force. I felt as though I were their own child, and with all a child’s fondness for them. I saw before my eyes grandmother as my childish fancy had pictured her on a charmed height. I felt the immeasurable delight which had always drawn me to her, and that unrest of youth which made us yearn to get the earliest possible glimpse of her wrinkled face. Grandfather had questioned me with special interest the last time I had seen him, and so I had already collected quite a medley of things of which I wished to give him an account. I thought with satisfaction how he would listen, and I felt happy in anticipation at the idea of causing him once again a few moments of simple pleasure.

As I was thus musing, a letter came from father, in which he gave me to understand that I was not to go to grandfather’s for they had buried him that very day, and he explained that he could not inform me about it sooner because he himself only got the news on the very day of the funeral.

I am not sufficiently versed in medical science to say what disease he died of. But he suffered only a very short time.

I am told he was buried most sumptuously, and Uncle John when they came to the church-yard, knelt first by the grave of Betuska, and only then turned aside and threw on grandfather’s coffin three handfuls of earth.

It was the last touch of poetry in uncle. From that time forth he became what people call a well-regulated man.

Later they laid Kubista next Betuska on the other side. Thus kindly mother earth lulled to equal rest those who made havoc of each other’s lives.

And those who still abide on earth, still make havoc of each other’s lives.