She returned in an hour's time, while Svejk had slumbered off.
And so he was woken up by a corpulent gentleman who laid his hand on his forehead for a moment and said:
'Don't be afraid. I am Dr Pavek from Vinohrady -let me feel your pulse-put this thermometer under your armpit.
Good-now show me your tongue-a bit more-keep it out-what did your father and mother die of?'
And so at a time when it was Vienna's earnest desire that all the peoples of Austria-Hungary should offer the finest examples of loyalty and devotion, Dr Favek prescribed Svejk bromide against his patriotic enthusiasm and recommended the brave and good soldier not to think about the war:
'Lie straight and keep quiet.
I'll come again tomorrow.'
When he came the next day, he asked Mrs Muller in the kitchen how the patient was.
'He's worse, doctor,' she answered with genuine grief.
'In the night he was singing, if you'll pardon the expression, the Austrian national anthem, when the rheumatism suddenly took him.'
Dr Favek felt obliged to react to this new manifestation of loyalty on the part of his patient by prescribing a larger dose of bromide.
The third day Mrs Muller informed him that Svejk had got even worse.
'In the afternoon he sent for a map of the battlefield, doctor, and in the night he was seized by a mad hallucination that Austria was going to win.'
'And he takes his powders strictly according to the prescription?'
'Oh, no, doctor, he hasn't even sent for them yet.'
Dr Pavek went away after having called down a storm of reproaches on Svejk's head and assured him that he would never again come to cure anybody who refused his professional help and bromide.
Only two days remained before Svejk would have to appear before the call-up board.
During this time Svejk made the necessary preparations. First he sent Mrs Muller to buy an army cap and next he sent her to borrow the bathchair from the confectioner round the corner - that same one in which the confectioner once used to wheel about in the fresh air his lame and wicked old grandfather.
Then he remembered he needed crutches.
Fortunately the confectioner still kept the crutches too as a family relic of his old grandfather.
Now he only needed the recruit's bunch of flowers for his button-hole.
Mrs Miiller got these for him too.
During these last two days she got noticeably thinner and wept from morning to night.
And so on that memorable day there appeared on the Prague streets a moving example of loyalty.
An old woman pushing before her a bath chair, in which there sat a man in an army cap with a finely polished Imperial badge and waving his crutches.
And in his button-hole there shone the gay flowers of a recruit.
And this man, waving his crutches again and again, shouted out to the streets of Prague:
'To Belgrade, to Belgrade!'
He was followed by a crowd of people which steadily grew from the small group that had gathered in front of the house from which he had gone out to war.
Svejk could see that the policemen standing at some of the crossroads saluted him.
At Wenceslas Square the crowd around Svejk's bathchair had grown by several hundreds and at the corner ofKrakovska Street they beat up a student in a German cap who had shouted out to Svejk:
'He ill Nieder mit dm Serben! '
At the corner of Vodickova Street mounted police rode m and dispersed the crowd.
When Svejk showed the district police inspector that he had it in black and white that he must that day appear before the call-up board, the latter was a trifle disappointed; and in order to reduce disturbances to a minimum he had Svejk and his bathchair escorted by two mounted police all the way to the Strelecky Ostrov.
The following article about this episode appeared in the Prague Official News: A CRIPPLE'S PATRIOTISM Yesterday afternoon the passers-by in the main streets of Prague were witnesses of a scene which was an eloquent testimony to the fact that in these great and solemn hours the sons of our nation can furnish the finest examples of loyalty and devotion to the throne of the aged monarch.
We might well have been back in the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, when Mucius Scaevola had hirnselfled off to battle, regardless of his burnt arm.
The most sacred feelings and sympathies were nobly demonstrated yesterday by a cripple on crutches who was pushed in an invalid chair by his aged mother.
This son of the Czech people, spontaneously and regardless of his infirmity, had himself driven off to war to sacrifice his life and possessions for his emperor.
And if his call:
'To Belgrade!' found such a lively echo on the streets of Prague, it only goes to prove what model examples of love for the fatherland and the Imperial House are proffered by the people of Prague.
The Prager Tagblatt wrote in the same strain, ending its article by saying that the cripple volunteer was escorted by a crowd of Germans who protected him with their bodies from lynching by the Czech agents of the Entente.
Bohemie published the same report and urged that the patriotic cripple should be fittingly rewarded. It announced that at its offices it was ready to receive gifts from German citizens for the unknown hero.
If in the eyes of these three journals the Czech lands could not have produced a nobler citizen, this was not the opinion of the gentlemen at the call-up board -certainly not of the chief army doctor Bautze, an utterly ruthless man who saw in everything a criminal attempt to evade military service, the front, bullets, and shrapnel.
This German's stock remark was widely famous:
'The whole Czech people are nothing but a pack of malingerers.'
During the ten weeks of his activities, of I I ,ooo civilians he cleaned out 10,999 malingerers, and he would certainly have got the eleven thousandth by the throat, if it had not happened that just when he shouted 'About turn!' the unfortunate man was carried off by a stroke.
'Take away that malingerer!' said Bautze, when he had ascertained that the man was dead.
And on that memorable day it was Svejk who stood before him. Like the others he was stark naked and chastely hid his nudity behind the crutches on which he supported himself.
'That's really a remarkable fig-leaf,' said Bautze in German. 'There were no fig-leaves like that in paradise.'
'Certified as totally unfit for service on grounds of idiocy,' observed the sergeant-major, looking at the official documents.