Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/205

 be hard to name any other funeral in which so many people took part, and amongst whom so large a number could say and said with tears the words, “He was our father.”

And in the evening after the funeral—if you had seen the Moldau! The whole Moldau was covered with boats of all descriptions, on all of which were lanterns of every colour of the rainbow and torches, and from all of them issued plaintive music and plaintive dirges—it was a grand “pannuchis” in which all joined with the frankest and heartiest good will.

So lived and died Poldik, the scavenger.