'From Prague.'
'And you're not going to run away?'
Now the lanky one joined the conversation.
It is a very remarkable phenomenon that people who are small and fat are generally goodhumoured optimists, whereas people who are lanky and spindly are on the contrary sceptics.
And so the lanky one said:
'He'd run away if he could.'
'But why should he?' replied the small tubby one.
'Now he's out of the garrison gaol he's practically free.
I'm carrying it in the bundle here.'
'What's in that bundle for the chaplain?' asked the lanky one.
'I don't know.'
'There, you see. You don't know and yet you talk about it.'
They crossed the Charles Bridge in complete silence.
In Charles Street the small tubby one spoke to Svejk again:
'Do you know why we're taking you to the chaplain?'
'For confession,' said Svejk nonchalantly.
'Tomorrow they're going to hang me.
This is what they always do on these occasions and they call it spiritual consolation.'
'And why are they going to ... ?' the lanky one asked cautiously, while the tubby one looked pityingly at Svejk.
Each was a small tradesman from the country, a paterfamilias.
'I don't know,' replied Svejk, with his good-natured smile.
'I haven't the faintest idea.
It must be fate.'
'Perhaps you were born under an unlucky star,' remarked the little fellow with a knowing air and in sympathy.
'At home in Jasenna near Josefov during the war with Prussia they hanged someone just like that.
They came to fetch him, didn't say anything to him, and hanged him in Josefov.'
'If you ask me,' said the lanky one sceptically, 'they don't hang a person for nothing at all.
There must always be some reason for it, so they can justify it.'
'When there isn't a war on,' remarked Svejk, 'they justify it, but when there is, they don't worry about you.
You could just as well fall at the front or be hanged at home -six of one or half a dozen of the other.'
'I say, you're not a" political", are you?' asked the lanky one.
The tone of his question indicated that he was beginning to take to Svejk.
'Yes, I'm much too political,' replied Svejk with a smile.
'You aren't a National Socialist?'
1 Now it was the turn of the small tubby one to start being cautious.
Breaking in on the conversation he said: 'What's that got to do with us anyway?
There are lots of people around everywhere and they're watching us.
If we could only take off our bayonets in a passage somewhere without attracting attention.
You won't run away from us, will you?
We'd have trouble if you did.
Aren't I right, Tonfk?' he said to the lanky one, who answered quietly:
'We could take off our bayonets.
After all, he's one of us.'
He ceased being a sceptic and his heart filled with compassion for Svejk.
They looked for a suitable passage where they could take off their bayonets and the tubby one allowed Svejk to walk alongside him.
'You'd like a smoke, wouldn't you?' he said.
'I wonder whether .. .'
He wanted to say:
'I wonder whether they allow you to have a smoke before they hang you', but he did not complete the sentence, realizing that it might be tactless.
They all had a smoke and Svejk's escort began to tell him about their families in the country near Hradec Kralovc, their wives and children, their plot of land and their cow.