Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/50

 judge blinked his eyes and his face twitched involuntarily like that of a rabbit,—this is what Dean Burian took to be the circumstance in favour of Dr. Kramář!—Dr. Preminger in full-dress uniform was sitting on the left-hand, alert, lithe, ready to leap.

Name,—when born,—where,—relations with the defendant.

A witness at his wedding,—a personal friend.

"Then were you his political opponent for a number of years?"

"Yes, for fifteen years. Up to the present day."

"How so, up to the present day?" he went for me.

"I see Dr. Kramář in the dock, when I might assume that I should see him decorated with all Austrian orders. This politician—"

I did not finish.

Swords rattled, the whole of the court was astir, Dr. Peutelschmidt reddened and shouted: "I did not ask you about that."

"You did ask."

"It is not your business to decide about that" he said, looking daggers at me, "answer only what I ask you."

And he asked why we had fallen out. I explained the story of the attack on the Czech evangelicals, but it did not seem to interest him very much.

"Were you a friend of Masaryk?"

"Yes and a contributor to his papers Čas and Naše Doba."

He showed me the copy of "L'indépendance" with Brožík's picture of Hus, and remarked "So you didn't write that."

Immediately afterwards he drew from an extensive file, my file, a letter dated October 17th, 1899, and introduced it with these preliminary remarks: "We now come to an interesting document which has to be read, and I call upon the Court to decide whether the public is to be excluded during this reading."

I wanted to protest against the reading,—in vain.