Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/245



T was a dreary mission for Frank to carry to the cemetery the measure for his grandfather’s grave. Hitherto he had not in the least realized that it was a burial ground. He had been there when somebody was being interred, when they sang hymns to him, prayed above his coffin, and wept for him. But what effect have all such ceremonies upon a mere child. Issuing from the burial ground he sees the laughing green fields, the flowery hedge rows, he sees the weasels run along the hedgerows, and forthwith yon grim cemetery is forgotten, and is no longer the truth.

But now he was carrying thither the measure for his grandfather’s grave. So, then, after all it was the truth. And then he saw how the crosses glowered above the wall into the surrounding district, how in the centre rose the red cross into the air, and on it the white-iron figure of the Christus; he saw, too, where dwelt the gravedigger and where was the bone house—so, then, all that world of greenery around him was no longer true, only the cemetery spoke to him. Its speech was like the speech of some direful ogre; Frank scarcely understood the words, and