Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/223

which we were barred by a tall but flimsily built wooden paling. The path we trod on was not always even, and we talked in fits and starts of leaping over the paling or taking other bold steps of a sort to gain the coveted territory on the other side where the walking was better. Presently we had our opportunity to cross over iwthout athletic exertion. We came to a convenient gap, left by some ruthless invader, and through it we stepped. It was cooler in the shadow of the trees, but it is woefully characteristic of the human disposition to depreciate that which has once been attained and therefore Milada began to realize that she had a conscience and to speak regretfully of us as trespassing gypsies. She reminded us that we were undoubtedly where we had no business to be, and longed to be on the outside of the barrier again. An unwary suggestion by Miloš that we might be on somebody’s game preserve aroused her still more, because that meant that there could be wild animals somewhere about. She and Miloš began arguing and continued to have it back and forth for several minutes, during which time we found another hole in the fence and emerged once more on the public way. I think they were still arguing when we came upon Wallenstein’s castle.

Wallenstein’s place clings to the brow of a precipice. Parts of it overhang, and some day there will be a tremor of the earth and the whole pile will go tumbling down into the valley. This does not seem to concern the family of agreeable souls who live in it, and act as custodians of the premises. They apparently feel that a catastrophe which has so long impended will probably never happen, at least not in their day. They ought to have more consideration for their children and their children’s children who will probably be caretakers in the days to come. Milada and I had a brief but serious talk about this singular hard-heartedness of theirs, but concluded that, on the whole, it was not our duty to sow the seeds of moral rectitude in the minds of otherwise decent people. Besides, the keeper’s wife brought us such excellent cake and coffee with milk that we felt it would be our part to intercede for her on the day of judgement even if she should take it into her head to pitch her offspring, each and all, over the battlements some morning before breakfast.

The castle is more than half ruined, but a few ill-advised attempts have been made to restore parts of it. The only effect of these restorations is to make one feel that none of the old strongholds, however picturesque, could ever have been habitable places. The living-rooms in the house which was once Wallenstein’s glory now look like dismantled tombs. They are dismal and grin and the cobwebs swing in ropes from the ceilings. As I passed thru them, a shiver of pity bestirred me on behalf of the people who once had to live there. Not Wallenstein himself, for that gory old person was always so busy planning atrocities that I do not suppose he had time for aesthetic particulars, but I did feel sorry for his wife and his mother-in-law and possibly a maiden aunt or so. At the same time I presume my sympathy was unnecessarily bestowed, for if one were to move about two-thirds of the furniture out of a modern house, substitute hideous copies for the pictures on the wall, and end by finger-printing the wood-work and flinging handfuls of dust broadcast, he would produce a devastation as depressing as that of a badly restored castle.

This is really beside the point, because we all enjoyed Wallenstein’s very much, and Milada got a particularly rare degree of pleasure through venturing out on a projecting nose of rock which was labelled “dangerous to life.” After we had seen the banqueting-hall and the chambers, we sat down for few minutes in the sun, and Miloš diverted himself by telling us stories. Then we took the road again.

The trail led for several hundred yards on the verge of the cliff. There was a broad view, and the sunlight was beginning to wane. The foreground bristled with a cluster of eccentric rock columns, extremely high, like square pillars. A few leaned slightly, but most of them stood upright and tried to look impressive in spite of the puny trees which had impudently started to grow on their summits. Some of these chimney formations came so close to the rock wall that it was possible to spring over to them, and we tried one such spring, just for the sake of the sensation, but it was not much fun. The landscape was really too fine and the daylight was going too fast to waste time in sport like that. So we lay on the grass for a time, absorbing, and then adjusted our knapsacks and went on.