'Oh, here you are!
I've been thinking it all over and I believe I've seen through you.
D'you understand, you bastard?
It's the first case I've had of anyone blubbing in the church here.'
He jumped down from the table and, standing beneath a huge gloomy painting of St Francis of Sales, jerked at Svejk's shoulder and shouted:
'Confess that you only blubbed for fun, you sod.'
And St Francis of Sales gazed inquiringly down from his portrait at Svejk.
From another painting on the other side, a martyr gazed openmouthed at him, while Roman mercenaries were sawing through his buttocks.
During this operation no suffering could be detected on the martyr's face, nor the joy nor the glory of martyrdom either.
He only stared, open-mouthed, as though he wanted to say:
'How on earth did this happen to me? What on earth are you doing to me, gentlemen?'
'Humbly report, sir,' said Svejk deliberately, staking everything on a single card, 'I confess to God Almighty and to you, venerable Father, who are God's deputy, that I was really only blubbing for fun.
I saw that for your preaching you needed a reformed sinner, and that you were looking for him in vain in your sermon.
And so I really wanted to give you a pleasure, so that you shouldn't think that there weren't any just men left, and at the same time I wanted to have a little fun on my own to get some relief.'
The chaplain looked searchingly at Svejk's artless countenance.
A sunbeam played on the melancholy face of St Francis of Sales and warmed the staring eyes of the martyr on the opposite wall.
'I'm beginning to take a fancy to you,' said the chaplain, sitting on the table again.
'Which regiment do you belong to?' He began to hiccough.
'Humbly report, sir, I belong and don't belong to the gist regiment and I haven't the faintest idea how I really stand.'
'And what are you in gaol here for?' inquired the chaplain, continuing to hiccough.
From the chapel were wafted in this direction the sounds of a harmonium which was a substitute for an organ.
The musician, a teacher who had been gaoled for desertion, wailed out on the harmonium the most mournful hymn tunes.
With the hiccoughing of the chaplain these sounds blended to form a new Doric scale.
'Humbly report, sir, I really don't know why I am in gaol here, but I don't complain.
It's just my bad luck.
My intentions are always the best, and in the end I always get the worst of it, just like that martyr there in the picture.'
The chaplain looked at the picture, smiled and said:
'Yes, I've really taken to you.
I must ask the judge advocate about you and I won't stay talking to you any longer.
I must get that Holy Mass off my chest!
About turn!
Dismiss!'
When Svejk returned to his family group of pants beneath the pulpit, he replied very drily and laconically to their questions about what the chaplain had wanted of him in the vestry:
'He's sozzled.'
The chaplain's new performance, the Holy Mass, was followed by all with close attention and unconcealed enjoyment.
One man under the pulpit even bet that the monstrance would fall out of the chaplain's hands.
He wagered his whole portion of bread against two across the jaw and won his bet.
What inspired the souls of everyone in the chapel at the sight of the chaplain's ministration was not the mysticism of the faithful or the piety of true Catholics; it was the feeling we have in the theatre when we do not know what the play is about, when the plot develops and we breathlessly wait to see how it is going to end.
They were absorbed in the scene which the chaplain with great devotion presented to them before the altar.
They surrendered completely to the aesthetic enjoyment of the vestments which the chaplain had put on inside out and watched all the happenings at the altar with ardent sympathy and enthusiasm.
The red-haired server, a deserter from the ranks of the sextons, a specialist in petty larcenies in the z8th regiment, was doing his level best to conjure up in his memory the whole ritual, technique and text of the Holy Mass.
He was both server and prompter to the chaplain, who quite frivolously turned whole sentences upside down and instead of getting to the ordinary Mass found himself at that point of the prayer book where the Advent Mass came. He then began to sing this to the general satisfaction of the congregation.
He had neither voice nor musical ear, and under the vaulting of the chapel there resounded such a squealing and caterwauling as could only be heard in a pig-sty.
'He's really well sozzled today,' those sitting in front of the altar said with great joy and relish.
'He isn't half oiled. He's been at it again!
He must have got tight with some tarts somewhere.'
And now for about the third time the strains of
'Ite, miss a est!' rang out from the altar like a Red Indian war-whoop until the windows rattled.
Then the chaplain looked once more into the chalice, in case there should still be a drop of wine left in it, made a gesture of annoyance and addressed his listeners :
'Well, now you can go home, you bastards.