After his departure the three agreed that Svejk was a patent imbecile and idiot according to all the natural laws invented by the luminaries of psychiatry.
The report which was passed to the examining magistrate contained inter alia the following:
The undersigned medical experts certify the complete mental feebleness and congenital idiocy of Josef Svejk, who appeared before the aforesaid commission and expressed himself in terms such as: 'Long live our Emperor Franz Joseph I', which utterance is sufficient to illuminate the state of mind of Josef Svejk as that of a patent imbecile.
The undersigned commission accordingly recommends:
1.
That the investigation of Josef Svejk be quashed.
2. ThatJosefSvejk be sent to a psychiatrical clinic for observation to establish how far his mental state is a danger to his surroundings.
While this report was being compiled Svejk was telling his fellow prisoners:
'They didn't care a hoot about Ferdinand, but talked to me about even stupider nonsense.
Finally we agreed that what we talked about was quite enough for us and we parted.'
'I don't believe anyone,' observed the short man with a stoop on whose meadow a skeleton happened to have been dug up.
'They're all of them a gang of crooks.'
'There have to be crooks in this world too,' said Svejk, lying down on his straw mattress. ' If everyone were honest with each other, they'd soon start punching each other's noses.'
4
Svejk Thrown out ofthe Lunatic Asylum
When Svejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms:
'I really don't know why those loonies get so angry when they're kept there.
You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite.
If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it's the most common or garden thing to do.
There's a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of.
A chap can pass himself off as God Almighty, the Virgin Mary, the Pope, the King of England, His Imperial Majesty or St Wenceslas, although the chap who said he was St Wenceslas was tied up naked all day long and lay in solitary confinement. There was also a chap who shouted out that he was the Archbishop, but all he did was to eat, and, if you'll pardon the expression, do something else which rhymes with it - excrete - but no one's ashamed of doing that there.
One chap even pretended to be St Cyril and St Methodius just to get a double portion.
And there was one gentleman there who was pregnant and invited everyone to the christening.
There were many people shut up there who were chess players, politicians, fishermen and scouts, stamp collectors and amateur photographers.
One person was there because of some old pots which he called funerary urns.
One was in a straitjacket all the time so that he shouldn't be able to calculate when the world would come to an end.
And I also met a certain number of professors there.
One of them used to follow me about all the time and expatiate on how the cradle of the gipsy race was in the Krkonose, and the other explained to me that inside the globe there was another globe much bigger than the outer one.
'Everyone there could say exactly what he pleased and what was on the tip of his tongue, just as if he was in parliament.
Sometimes they used to tell each other fairy stories and started fighting when something very bad happened to a princess.
The wildest of them all was a gentleman who pretended to be the sixteenth volume of Otto's Encyclopedia and asked everybody to open him and to find the entry: "Cardboard box stapling machine", otherwise he would be done for.
He only quietened down when they put him in a straitjacket.
Then he was happy, because he thought he had got into a bookbinder's press and begged to be given a modern trim.
It was really like living in paradise there.
You could kick up a row, fight, sing, cry, bleat, yell, jump, say your prayers, turn somersaults, crawl on all fours, hop, run about, dance, skip, squat all day on your haunches and climb up the walls. No one would come to you and tell you:
"You mustn't do that, sir. It's not decent. You should be ashamed of yourself. Aren't you properly brought up?"
It's true however that there are loonies there who are quite quiet.
There was one well brought-up inventor, for instance, who continually picked his nose and said only once a day:
"I've just discovered electricity."
As I say it was very pleasant there and those few days which I spent in the lunatic asylum are among the loveliest hours of my life.'
And indeed the very welcome which awaited Svejk in the asylum, when they had taken him away from the criminal court and brought him there for observation, surpassed his expectations.
First they stripped him naked, then they gave him a hospital gown and led him off to have a bath, holding him familiarly under his arms, while one of the male nurses entertained him by telling him some jokes about Jews.
In the bathroom they immersed him in a tub of warm water, and then pulled him out and put him under a cold douche.
They repeated this three times and then asked him how he liked it.
Svejk said that it was better than in the baths near the Charles Bridge, and that he liked bathing very much.
'If you'll only cut my nails and my hair too, I'll have everything I need to make me completely happy,' he added with a pleasant smile.
And this request of his was granted too, and after they had thoroughly rubbed him down with a sponge as well, they wrapped him in a sheet, carried him off to the first ward, put him on to a bed, covered him with a quilt and asked him to go to sleep.
And even today Svejk talks about it with affection:
'Just imagine, they carried me, really carried me off.
I was in a state of utter bliss at that moment.'