Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/242

 Then again he run through the dead man’s past life with him, and here it pretty often came to pass that Bartos wept; just as if he had only then laid the corpse in the grave. Generally this exhumation concluded thus “It is not well with thee down there; they have patched thee together but poorly. Alas! I fear thou will not hold together much longer.” After this he touched the corpse, which thereupon fell to pieces into bones and a few clods of earth.

This man, just as he was compassionate towards the dead, was yet a hundred times more so towards the living. There was no grief for which he did not feel compassion, there was no misfortune which ever failed to touch his heart. But his was not perhaps the spurious compassion which is assumed to win general admiration; rather was it the compassion which, if possible without parade and bustle, is succeeded by compassionate deeds.

Once they brought a coffin to the burial ground slovenly nailed together. No one followed it to the grave save one little girl three years of age. In the coffin lay a kind of a servant girl—they called her Katchka. She was an illegitimate child, and the little girl who followed her to the grave was also illegitimate. How could any honest soul come to such a funeral?

For the nonce, Bartos had to play the priest. He repeated a few prayers over the grave, and when the little girl wept over the coffin, he said “Sprinkle it,