Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/23

 sight was weak, they said, and was being impaired by his official duties at so responsible a spot. The Prince denied this energetically but vainly. He did actually fall ill and retired.

On May 21st, 1915, Dr. Kramář was arrested. He "moved" to Vienna.

A day or so after that I was travelling to Prague for the Whitsuntide holidays. In the train I met Deputy Choc. We still knew nothing about it. We talked of this and that, until suddenly it occurred to Choc that Hofrat So-and-so was travelling in the same carriage with us, and that he would go to him and discover the latest news. He soon came back; he had promised to say nothing, but he would tell me,—they had arrested Kramář. Said I, that is impossible.—Yes, the Hofrat declares it is so.—We were silent for a while. Then I pointed out to him that this would be a harakiri of Austrian policy in Bohemia; that everyone knew how consistent an advocate of that policy Dr. Kramář had been in the last fifteen years; that no Viennese Government could be so short-sighted as to do anything of the kind; that Dr. Kramář was in all Viennese circles,—Choc only shrugged his shoulders; the Hofrat had declared it was so.

From the train the field of Lipan could be seen. The sky above it had reddened, and into this blood-like expanse towered up mournfully the black hill with the gloomy monument to Prokop the Great. We looked at it. "Well then, we shall all have our turn" I remarked to Choc.

"We shall, never mind".

In the meanwhile, the Hofrat's secret was known to the whole of Prague. And in a considerably enlarged edition. Altogether, nowhere had so many legends come into existence as at Prague in those two years. On the very same evening I heard it definitely asserted