It's all over.
I observed that you don't show that true piety you ought to have when you are in church in the presence of the Holy of Holies, you cads.
When you're face to face with God Almighty you're not ashamed to laugh aloud, cough and snigger, shuffle your feet, even in my presence, who represent here the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ and God the Father, you bloody imbeciles.
If you do this again next time you'll get the hell you deserve and you'll learn that there's not only that hell which I preached to you about in my last sermon but one, but a hell on earth as well.
And if you should by any chance save yourself from the first one, I'll see you don't escape from the second.
Dismiss!'
The chaplain, who had just given such a wonderful practical demonstration of that damnable old custom - prison visiting - went into the vestry, changed his clothes, poured out some sacramental wine from the cask into a flagon, drank it up and with the help of the redhaired server mounted his horse which was tied up in the courtyard.
Then he remembered Svejk, dismounted again and went to the office of Judge Advocate Bernis.
Judge Advocate Bernis was a man who liked society. He was an elegant dancer and a rake who was frightfully bored here and spent his time writing German verses for girls' autograph albums so as to have a supply always at hand.
He was the most important element in the whole apparatus of military justice, and because he had such a tremendous pile of unfinished cases and muddled documents he was held in respect by the whole military court on Hradcany.
He kept losing the documents for the indictment and was compelled to invent new ones. He mixed up names, lost the threads of the indictments and spun new ones just as they happened to come into his head. He tried deserters for theft and thieves for desertion. He brought in political cases which he had fabricated himself. He invented all kinds of hocus-pocus to convict men of crimes they had never even dreamt of. He invented insults to the monarch and always attributed fabricated incriminating statements to anyone, if the indictment and informers' reports had got lost in the unending chaos of documents and official correspondence.
'Ballo,' said the chaplain, shaking his hand.
'How are you?'
'Not very well,' answered Bernis.
'They've mucked up my papers and I can't make bloody head or tail of them.
Yesterday I put up the material I'd processed on a fellow had up for mutiny, and they sent it back saying that in this case it wasn't a question of mutiny but of stealing a tin.
And I'd taken the trouble to give it a completely different number, and it beats me how they managed to discover it.'
The judge advocate spat.
'Are you still playing cards?' asked the chaplain.
'I've lost everything I had at cards.
The last time it happened I was playing makao with that bald-headed colonel and I had to throw everything I'd got down his bloody maw.
But I know of a nice young bird. And what are you doing, Holy Father?'
'I need a batman,' said the chaplain.
'Last time I had an old bookkeeper without academic education but a prize bastard.
He kept on snivelling and praying that God would save him, and so in the end I drafted him off to the front with a march battalion.
They say it was cut to pieces.
Then they sent me a little chap, who did nothing but sit in the pub and drink at my expense.
He was quite a tolerable cove, but had sweaty feet.
So I drafted him off too.
Today when I was preaching I found a bastard who started blubbing just for fun.
That's the kind of cove I need.
He's called Svejk and sits in no. 16.
I'd like to know why they've put him there and whether it wouldn't be possible somehow to arrange for me to get him out.'
The judge advocate started looking in the drawers for the files on Svejk, but as usual he couldn't find anything.
'Captain Linhart'll have them,' he said after a long search.
'God knows where all these files of mine get to.
I must have sent them to Linhart.
I'll telephone to him at once -Hallo!
It's Lieutenant Bemis speaking, sir.
Please, have you by any chance some files about a man called Svejk ....
They must be with me?
I'm surprised .... I took them over from you?
Well, I'm very surprised ....
He's at present in no. 16 ... I know, sir, that I've got the no. 16 file with me.
But I thought that Svejk's papers must be lying around somewhere in your tray .... You'd be glad if I didn't speak to you in that tone?
Papers don't lie around in your tray? ...
Hallo, hallo .. .'
Bemis sat down at the table and angrily condemned the disorderly way the investigations were being carried out.
There was a longstanding feud between him and Captain Linhart in which they were both very consistent. IfBernis got hold of papers belonging to Linhart, he arranged them in a way that no one could make head or tail of them.
Linhart did exactly the same with papers belonging to Bemis.