Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/173

 been formed in the year 1893; I, that it was a mighty wave which in that year had surged upon us Czechs,—in a word, each of us told what he knew.

And Frank paraphrased for the report what I had known and told.

We were ready. Frank read the report to me.

"Correct?" he asked, when he had finished.

"Yes. But tell me, did you find nothing else in my literary activity for which you could have imprisoned and tried me? l have written heaps of other things which might be more important to you and more serious to me—"

He looked at me with his cold eyes, and showed the golden strips in his teeth as he smiled quietly: "No, this is the only thing which has come to our knowledge".

I signed the report.

Frank handed me over to the defence-corps men, and the defence-corps men took me home. The streets, their bustle, the houses, the flowers in the windows, the shop-fronts, the placards, the golden radiance of the sun in the air,—all these things were already quite strange to me, quite strange.

In number 60 our "Galicians" were standing in the middle of the room, and Mr. Wilder was describing to them the courses of some banquet or other; Papa Declich was sitting on my bed (this was how he kept guard over it whenever I went away, so that nobody else should lie down there), and for motives of economy was carefully splitting matches in half; Papa Declich never smoked a cigar as a cigar, but hacked it into small pieces, and then smoked it in the form of cigarettes,—a modest and frugal man, as far as his own wants were concerned, but open-handed and liberal towards