Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/51

 "Surely you wrote that?" asked the leading counsel sharply.

"Yes I did, but these matters are now out of date, the letter was written in exasperation at the suspended language ordinances."

"The letter will be read."

Swords rattled, the court rose and proceeded to deliberate.

They called for the public to leave the court.

Dr. Peutelschmidt read the letter. The presiding judge blinked his eyes, the other members of the court cast withering glances at me.

It was the letter which I wrote to Dr. Kramář in the Crimea after the suspension of the language ordinances. A letter in which there are about seventy cases of lèse majesté. A letter about Franz Joseph.

"How do you reconcile it with your finer feelings, Dr. Kramář, that you selected the writer of such a letter to be a witness at your wedding?" he said swooping down on the defendant.

Dr. Kramář explained. The witness, he said, is a hot-headed poet, a pugnacious character, who has no consideration for any authority in the world, not for the nation either as a whole or individually, not for Bishops, Cardinals, not for the Pope, not for Kings and Emperors; not even his closest friends are safe from his pen, he himself could tell how he had been irritated not only fifteen years ago, but even before he fell out with the witness; he quoted an epigram which aroused suppressed mirth,—but the leading counsel swooped down on him afresh: "And you preserved such a letter Dr. Kramář?"

"It is the manuscript of a poet" replied the defendant simply.

There followed a few questions and answers about the "Volná Myšlenka" and the tendencies of this movement,—even now I do not know why and how it was that this "Volná Myšlenka" was mix-