Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/381

 bone, and none of you have much appetite for that. Surely, you do not believe that old Loyka has ceased to be hospitable? Oh, I could feast you freely, but you would spurn my dainties, saving such of you as are like me, pensioned off on a son’s bounty, and his son and his son’s wife have meted out to him for his portion two chambers which were reserved for tinkers and pedlars—but you know it all.”

Among the neighbours who had come thither was also the mayor, and he said “Pantata, you would not have to dwell in those chambers. Joseph promises you that he will not meddle with you in the pension house.”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Loyka, “and so you believe him, do you? This man who went against me like an enemy until he had stripped me of everything! Of my rights of hospodarship, of my respect with the servants, of the love of my children, and of this last span of earth on which I had laid my head. If he were to stretch out his hand to this cross, and lay it here in the side of the martyred Jesus, I would say to him “thou liest.”

On this no one spoke more. The neighbours saw that it would be in vain, and Joseph perhaps said nothing, because he saw that every further step he took only the more incensed his father. Only here and there among themselves the neighbours exchanged a few desultory remarks.