Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/341

conditions in their jail,—perhaps they were telling each other anecdotes,—who knows?

Dr. Mattuš came in, and Mayor Groš was called. The aged leader of the Old Czechs testified that they “do it very thoroughly” indeed, they want to know everything, they inquire about everything from several quarters.

A door rattled below, a military jailer opened the entry to the large yard, and a crowd of people scrambled out. They looked up at us,—some greeted, obviously our fellow-countrymen. Men old and young, in clothing which varied from the workmen’s dress to a lounge suit, healthy and sick, as shown by their gait and the color of their faces, swarmed in fours like a large dark reptile along the elipse of the yard.

“The thick-set man in the cap is Markov,—condemned to death” explained Dr. Soukup to me, “the old man beside him is Kurylewicz, also condemned to death, the one who is just greeting us is Giunio.”

All were talking, a muffled buzzing penetrated to the room where we were.

“They walk for half an hour like that in the morning, half an hour in the afternoon,” remarked Dr. Soukup. We all stood at the windows and looked out. “The jail was built for two hundred people, now there are more than seven hundred in it. They are let out for exercise by floors, and when they are relieved, it is the turn of those who are locked up in the tower.”

“Kramář and Rašín are in the tower?” asked somebody.

“Yes, here on the left.”

We looked out. In a semi-circle squeezed into the yard, arose a grey building with small barred windows. Angel’s Castle,—I was reminded of Rome.

The prisoners were guarded by defence-corps men with bayonets. The half hour was up; there was a word of command, the door opened, the black reptile crawled into the dark entrance of the building and was lost within it. The yard was empty.

Mayor Groš returned. Flushed, in high spirits, he was obviously glad that his period of torture was over.

Dean Burian went to relate what he knew and what he had seen.

It began to be tiresome. Udržal who was present at the proceedings in the body of the court, looked in for a moment and gave us an account of his impressions.

There was a buzzing in the ears, as always when a man listens to time as it elapses.

Dean Burian returned after a while. Finished? No. It’s the interval. “The presiding judge is certainly on the side of Kramář; whenever I said anything favorable to Kramář, his eyes twinkled at me.

The interval was over, the Dean was again called into the court-room. Dr. Rašín was indifferent, as if he had been a bored spectator of the trial. Dr. Kramář,—pangs of sorrow clutched at my heart, was sunken, his face was an ashen color, it was years since I had seen him and now like this. Editor Červinka seemed to be in a whimsical mood, and Zamazal, by means of whom the military tribunal, with remarkable sagacity, had increased the group of traitors to a quartette, was as mournful as the overcast day outside.

Dr. Peutelschmidt, the leading counsel for the prosecution, had seemingly acquired military smartness to perfection, although his head with its almost white hair, recalled the poet Robert Hamerling. In civil life he was, I understood, a police magistrate, also very smart and stern,—here his manners, yes, they reminded me of the army; that is how an old gaunt Sergeant Major browbeats a poor raw recruit for bad marching and faulty movements. Or, if you like, another comparison. He watched the defendants in the dock like a hawk, which has somewhere come upon four captured doves, and woe betide them if they advance a single word to defend themselves. These men were condemned in advance, ruined in advance. Why these ceremonies, cross-examinations, and all this martyrdom?

The members of the court were obviously tired, the presiding judge blinked his eyes and his face twitched involuntarily like that of a rabbit, this is what Dean Burian took to be the circumstance in favor of Dr. Kramář!—Dr. Preminger in full-dress uniform was sitting on the left-hand, alert, lithe, ready to leap.

Name,—when born,—where,—relations with the defendant.

A witness at his wedding,—a personal friend.

“Then were you his political opponent for a number of years?”

“Yes, for fifteen years. Up to the present day.”

“How so, up to the present day?” he went for me.

“I see Dr. Kramář in the dock, when I might assume that I should see him decorated with all Austrian orders. This politician—”

I did not finish.

Swords rattled, the whole of the court was astir, Dr. Peutelschmidt reddened and shouted: “I did not ask you about that.”

“You did ask.”

“It is not your business to decide about that” he said, looking daggers at me, “answer only what I ask you.”

And he asked why we had fallen out. I explained the story of the attack on the Czech evangelicals, but it did not seem to interest him very much.

“Were you a friend of Masaryk?”

“Yes and a contributor to his papers Čas and Naše Doba.”

He showed me the copy of “L’indépendance” with Brožík’s picture of Hus, and remarked “So you didn’t write that.”

Immediately afterwards he drew from an extensive file, my file, a letter dated October 17th,