Page:The grandmother; a story of country life in Bohemia.pdf/295

Rh anything in the world for him; his face lost its repulsiveness and awoke only pity and sympathy. He must have read my heart well, for he seized my hand quickly, pressed it, and with atrembling voice said: 'If you could have given me your hand thus three years ago, I should not be here. Why did we not meet? Why did I only meet people who trampled me into the dust, who ridiculed my face, who fed me with wormwood and poison? My mother never loved me, my brother drove me away, my sister was ashamed of me, and she, who I thought loved me, for whom I would have risked my life, for whose smile I would have brought down the stars, for whom I regretted that I did not have ten lives that I might offer them for her love, she only mocked me, and when I wanted to hear from her own lips what all others told me, she drove me out of her door with her dog.' Then this savage man wept like a child.

"After a while he dried his tears, took my hand and added quietly: 'When you come to Marsovward, go into that deep, wild glen. Above the precipice stands an isolated fir; give it my greeting and greet those wild birds that fly about its head, and those high mountains. Under its branches I slept many a night, to it I told what nobody knows. Then I was not such a wretched being; I was.' He stopped, sat down on the bench again, and said no more, nor did he look at me again.

"I left the prison full of pity for him; the people condemned him, cursed him for a hideous monster, said that he deserved death, that villainy looked out of his eyes, that he would see no priest nor anybody else, that he made faces at people and