The last gift was a white hyacinth in a flower-pot.
When all of this lay unpacked on the bed the Baroness von Botzenheim could not restrain her tears for emotion.
Several famished malingerers felt their mouths water.
The baroness's companion propped up the seated Svejk and wept too.
There was a silence of the grave which was suddenly broken by Svejk who said with his hands clasped in prayer:
'Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come ....
Pardon me, your ladyship, it's not right.
I mean to say: 0 God our Father in heaven, bless for us these gifts that we may enjoy them thanks to Thy goodness.
Amen.'
After these words he took a chicken from the bed and started to devour it under the horrified gaze of Dr Griinstein.
'Ach, how he enjoys it, poor soldier,' the old baroness whispered enthusiastically to Dr Griinstein.
'He's certainly well again and can go to the battlefield.
I'm really very glad that my gifts stand him in such good stead.'
Then she walked from bed to bed, distributing cigarettes and chocolate creams. When she came back again to Svejk after her promenade, she stroked his hair, said in German:
'God protect you all!' and went out of the door with her whole escort.
Before Dr Griinstein could return from below, where he had gone to see the baroness out, Svejk had distributed the chickens.
They were bolted by the patients so quickly that Dr Gri.instein found only a heap of bones gnawed cleanly, as though the chickens had fallen alive into a nest of vultures and the sun had been beating down on their gnawed bones for several months.
The war liqueur and the three bottles of wine had also disappeared.
The packets of chocolate and the box of biscuits were likewise lost in the patients' stomachs.
Someone had even drunk up the bottle of nail-polish which was in the manicure set and eaten the toothpaste which had been enclosed with the toothbrush.
When Dr Gri.instein returned he resumed his belligerent pose and delivered a long speech. A stone fell from his heart now that the visitors had gone.
The pile of gnawed bones confirmed his belief that they were all incorrigible.
'Men,' he burst out, 'if you'd had a little sense, you'd have left it all untouched and said to yourselves:
"If we eat it all up, then the doctor won't believe that we're very ill."
Now you've yourselves provided me with proof that you don't appreciate my kindness.
I pump your stomachs, I give you enemas, I try to keep you on strict diet and you go and stuff up your stomachs again.
Do you want to get stomach catarrh?
You're making a great mistake.
Before your stomach tries to digest all this I'll clean it out for you so thoroughly that you'll remember it to your dying day and tell your children how you once gobbled up chickens, and gorged yourself on various other delicacies, and how they didn't stay in your stomach fifteen minutes, because they pumped it out while it was still warm.
And now fall in all of you, one after the other, so that you don't forget that I'm not a bloody fool like you are, but a little bit cleverer than the whole lot of you together.
In addition I want to inform you that tomorrow I'm going to send a commission to you, because you've been lazing around here far too long and there's nothing wrong with any of you if in those five minutes you could pig it and stuff your stomachs up so chock-full as you did just now. One, two, three, march!'
When it was Svejk's turn Dr Griinstein looked at him and a memory of the mysterious visit of the day prompted him to ask:
'You know Her Excellency ? '
'She's my stepmother,' Svejk answered calmly.
'In tender years she abandoned me and now she's found me again .... ' And Dr Griinstein said tersely:
'Mterwards give Svejk an extra enema.'
In the evening melancholy reigned among the bunks.
A few hours earlier all of them had had in their stomachs various good and tasty things and now they only had weak tea and a slice of bread.
From the window could be heard the voice of no. 21:
'Do you know, chaps, that I prefer fried chicken to roast?'
Somebody growled:
'Give him the blanket treatment', but they were all so weak after the unsuccessful banquet that no one stirred.
Dr Griinstein was as good as his word.
In the morning there came several military doctors from the famous commission.
They went solemnly past the rows of beds and said nothing else but
'Put out your tongue!'
Svejk put his tongue out so far that his face made an idiotic grimace and his eyes screwed up:
'Humbly report, sir, I don't have a longer tongue than that.'
And an interesting discussion arose between Svejk and the commission.
Svejk asserted that he had made this observation in case they might think he was trying to hide his tongue from them.