He turned to Christ to help him make a career.
He applied to him in absolute confidence that this was a business transaction between him and the Son of God.
He was solemnly baptized in the Emmaus monastery in Prague.
Father Alban himself' dipped him in the font.
It was a magnificent spectacle; it was attended by a pious major from the regiment where Otto Katz served, an old maid from the Institute of Gentlewomen on the Hradcany and a large-jowled representative of the consistory, who acted as his godfather.
The officers' examination went off well, and the newly-fledged Christian Otto Katz stayed in the army.
At first he thought he was going to do well and even wanted to study on staff courses. But one day he got drunk and went into a monastery, gave up the sword and donned the cassock.
He was received by the archbishop on the Hradcany and managed to get himself into the seminary.
Before his ordination he got drunk as a fish in a very respectable house served by ladies in the alley behind U Vejvodu, and straight from a whirl of voluptuous pleasures and delights went to have himself ordained.
After his ordination he went to his regiment to try and get them to help him get a job. After he was appointed chaplain, he bought a horse, rode through the streets of Prague and took a merry part in all the drinking bouts with the officers of his regiment.
In the corridor of the house where he lived the curses of dissatisfied creditors could very often be heard.
He also brought home tarts from off the streets or sent his orderly to fetch them.
He loved playing farbl,2 and there were certain conjectures and presumptions that he cheated, but nobody caught him out with an ace hidden in the wide sleeves of his chaplain's cassock.
In officer circles they called him 'Holy Father'.
He never prepared his sermons beforehand and in this he differed from his predecessor who also used to visit the garrison gaol.
The latter was possessed by the fixed idea that the men in the garrison gaol could be reformed from the pulpit.
This venerable chaplain piously rolled his eyes, explaining to the prisoners that prostitutes should be reformed and care for unmarried mothers improved, and held forth about the bringing up of illegitimate children.
His sermons were of an abstract character with no connection whatsoever with life today. They were very boring.
Chaplain Otto Katz, on the contrary, delivered sermons which everybody looked forward to.
It was a festive moment when they led the 'number sixteens' to the chapel in their pants, because to allow them to be dressed entailed the risk that one of them might escape.
They put these twenty angels in white pants right under the pulpit.
Some of them, upon whom fortune had smiled, were chewing fag-ends which they had found on the way, because as was only natural they had no pockets and there was nowhere to put them.
Around them stood the rest of the garrison prisoners and gazed with relish at the twenty men in pants beneath the pulpit.
The chaplain climbed up in to it, clinking his spurs.
'Attention!' he shouted.
'Let us pray, forward after me, repeating what I say!
And you at the back there, you bastard, don't snot into your hands! You're in the temple of the Lord, and I'll have you locked up for it.
I wonder if you haven't forgotten the Lord's Prayer, you oafs?
All right, let's try it - well, I knew it wouldn't go.
What the hell does the Lord's Prayer mean to you?
All you care about is two helpings of meat and bean salad, stuffing yourself up, lying on your backsides on your bunk and picking your nose without a thought for the Lord.
Isn't that right?'
He stared down from the pulpit at the twenty white angels in pants, who were thoroughly enjoying themselves like all the rest.
At the back they were playing 'flesh'. 1
'This is first-class,' Svejk whispered to his neighbour, who was suspected of having taken an axe and chopped off all his mate's fingers to get him out of military service -at the price of three crowns.
'You wait,' was the answer.
'Today he's properly oiled again. He'll tell us once more about the thorny path of sin.'
True enough the chaplain was in an excellent mood that day.
He did not know himself why he was doing it, but he continually leaned out of the pulpit and nearly overbalanced.
'Sing something, boys,' he shouted down to them, 'or do you want me to teach you a new song?
Now sing with me:
'Of all people in the world, I love my love the best.
I'm not her only visitor; I queue up with the rest. Her lovers are innumerable. Now, tell me, pray, her name? It is the Virgin Mary
'You'll never learn it, you bastards,' continued the chaplain.
'I'd like to have you all shot, do you understand ?
I state this from this holy place of God, you scoundrels, because God's a thing that's not afraid of you and'll give you hell, and all because you hesitate to turn to Christ and you'd rather go along the thorny path of sin.'
'Now it's coming.
He's properly oiled,' whispered Svejk's neighbour delightedly.
'The thorny path of sin, you bloody half-wits, is the path of the battle against vice.
You are the prodigal sons who prefer to loll about in quod rather than return to the bosom of Our Father. But lift up your eyes to heaven on high, and you will be victorious and peace will abide in your souls, you gutter-snipes. I'd be glad if the person at the back would stop snorting.