Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/154

 lit it deliberately, and walked towards Joseph’s Square.

Along the narrow Elisabeth Street human life had flowed like a stream, but in Joseph Square it expanded in broad billows like a sea. All the excursionists converged hither to be scattered in all directions. The trams were rattling past, making the flag-stones tremble. Almost forgetting his troubles, he looked at the crowds which were storming the cars. These people, battling for room to sit or stand in them, seemed to him like lunatics. They fought their way with their elbows, pushed others off the steps to mount in their place; some positively butted into a medley of bodies and limbs, and others who had already boarded a car, were suddenly seized with fear and tried to alight again. Hats fell from their heads; some caught their dresses, and the seams of their garments were strained to the utmost, or gave way.

‘What do they mean by it?’ thought Hron, ‘why this wild struggle?’

The gas-lamps were beginning to sparkle one  another  a third. Ivan Hron watched the lamplighter with his pole who went regularly from post to post with his head bent, and without minding the wild