'My poor little babes!
My poor wife!'
The conscienceless penitent stood up and started talking about his babes: he had five. The eldest was twelve and was one of those scouts. He only drank water and ought to have been an example to his father, who had misbehaved like this for the first time in his life.
'A scout?' exclaimed Svejk.
'I like hearing about those scouts.
Once in Mydlovary near Zliv, district Hluboka, police district Ceske Budejovice, just when we of the grst were doing our training, the peasants from the neighbourhood started a hunt for scouts who were swarming in the parish wood.
They caught three of them.
When they tied up the smallest of them, he moaned, squealed and wailed so much that we hardened soldiers could not bear the sight of it and thought it better to clear off.
While these three scouts were being tied up they bit eight peasants.
Afterwards under the torture of the birch they confessed before the mayor that there wasn't a single meadow in the region they hadn't flattened out while they lay sunbathing.
And then again they said that it was only by pure accident that the field of standing corn near Razice burnt down. It was just before the harvest and they only happened to be roasting a deer on a spit in the middle of it -one they'd stalked and killed with their knives in the parish wood.
In their hide-out in the wood were found more than half a hundredweight of gnawed bones of poultry and game, an enormous quantity of cherry stones, heaps of cores of unripe apples and other good things.'
The scout's poor father was not to be comforted, however.
'What have I done?' he wailed.
'My reputation is ruined.'
'It certainly is,' said Svejk with his characteristic frankness.
'After all you've done your reputation will certainly be ruined for life.
When your friends have read all about it in the newspapers they'll certainly add something to it of their own.
They always do that, but don't be worried about it.
There are ten times more people in the world with blemished reputations than there are with unblemished ones!
That's just a very unimportant trifle.'
In the passage energetic steps could be heard, the key grated in the lock, the door opened and a policeman called Svejk's name.
'Excuse me,' said Svejk chivalrously,
'I've only been here since twelve noon, but this gentleman has been here since six o'clock this morning.
I'm not in any hurry anyway.'
Instead of getting an answer Svejk was dragged into the passage by the powerful arm of a policeman and silently led up the stairs to the first floor.
In the second room a police inspector was sitting at a table. He was a fat gentleman of amiable countenance and said to Svejk:
'So you're this Svejk, then?
And how did you get here?'
'The most common or garden way in the world,' answered Svejk.
'I came here under the escort of a police officer, because I wasn't going to put up with them throwing me out of the lunatic asylum without any lunch.
It was as though they took me for a kicked-out whore.'
'All right, Svejk,' said the inspector affably, 'why should we have to be bothered with you here at Salmova Street?
Wouldn't it be better to send you to police headquarters?'
'You're master of the situation, as the saying goes,' said Svejk with composure.
'A walk to police headquarters now in the evening would be quite a pleasant little stroll.'
'I am glad that we agree about that,' said the inspector cheerfully.
'It's much better when we agree, isn't it, Svejk?'
'And I'm always awfully glad to take advice from anyone too,' replied Svejk.
'I'll never forget your kindness to me, inspector. Believe me I won't.'
Bowing deferentially he went down to the guardroom accompanied by the police officer, and a quarter of an hour later could be seen at the corner of Jecmi Street and Charles Square under the escort of another police officer who was carrying under his arm a voluminous book of prisoners' records with the German title Arrestantenbuch.
At the corner of Spalena Street Svejk and his escort met a crowd of people who were surging round a placard that had been hung up.
'That's His Imperial Majesty's proclamation on the declaration of war,' said the police officer to Svejk.
'I prophesied it,' said Svejk, 'but in the lunatic asylum they still don't know about it, although they should have got it from the horse's mouth.'
'What do you mean?' the police officer asked Svejk.
'Because they've got a lot of officer gentlemen locked up there,' Svejk explained, and when they reached another crowd of people surging in front of the proclamation, Svejk shouted out:
'God save our Emperor Franz Joseph!
We shall win this war!'
Someone in the enthusiastic crowd banged his hat over his ears, and so the good soldier Svejk, surrounded by a crowd of people, stepped once more through the gates of police headquarters.
'Q!Iite definitely we'll win this war. I repeat it once more, gentlemen!'