Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/294

 do so, he will soon close it against you as you closed it against your father, and then you will never have another chance of poisoning it for him, pantata.

Loyka scrutinised Vena, and seemed half as though he had heard half as though he had not heard him. “Oh! Vena,” he said, “prythee tell me how gall diffuses itself through the body.” And he took him and looked into his eyes as though he expected from him a serious answer.

“Let me fool you only just once,” sneered Vena.

“Prythee, boy, fool on,” entreated Loyka in a voice of humiliation that was almost pitiable.

“And why, pray, should I mix myself up in the concern,” sneered Vena. “Of course your son will do the business for you. How, pray, could he fail to do it for you when you are, after all, but a pensioner on his bounty. You managed to fool your own father, why then should your son not manage to do the same by you? But what surprises me is—that in your son it begins so precious soon. You put the fool’s cap on your father later. But who can change the course of nature? Now-a-days youth develops faster. Joseph, methinks, will have done with you sooner than you had done with your defunct father.”

“Don’t you know anything more to tell me than that,” enquired old Loyka.

“I do know,” said Vena. “But there is nothing in all that. You to talk about happiness, indeed.