The pious chaplain went away shaking his head, and as usual Katz acquitted himself nobly of his task.
This time it was wine and soda water which was transubstantiated into the blood of our Lord, and the sermon was longer, every third word being 'and so forth and of course'.
'Today, my men, you are going to the front and so forth.
Incline your hearts now to God and so forth and of course.
You don't know what's going to happen to you and so forth and of course.'
And from the altar there continued to thunder: 'And so forth and of course', alternating with God and all the saints.
In his enthusiasm and rhetorical flights the chaplain presented Prince Eugene of Savoy as a saint who would protect them when they built bridges over the rivers.
Nonetheless the drumhead mass ended without any untoward incident. It was pleasant and amusing.
The sappers enjoyed themselves very much.
On the way back the chaplain and Svejk were not allowed into the tram with their folding field altar.
'I'll break this saint on your head,' Svejk said to the conductor.
When they finally got home they found that somewhere on the way they had lost the tabernacle.
'It doesn't matter,' said Svejk.
'The early Christians served Holy Mass without a tabernacle.
If we advertised for it somewhere, the honest man who found it could ask us for a reward.
If it had been money, then I don't suppose any honest finder would have been found, although such people do exist.
In our regiment at Budejovice there was a soldier, a dear old fathead, who once found six hundred crowns in the street and gave it up to the police.
In the newspapers they wrote about him as an honest finder, but it only brought discredit on him.
No one would talk to him; everyone said:
"You half-wit, what's this bloody nonsense you've done?
Why, you must be quite disgusted with yourself, if you've still any sense of honour left."
He had a girl and she wouldn't speak to him any more.
When he came home on leave his friends threw him out of the pub during a dance-party because of it.
He got ill and took it all so much to heart that he finally threw himself under a train. And then again in our street there was a tailor who found a golden ring.
People warned him not to give it up to the police, but he wouldn't listen.
He got an unusually kind reception there and was told that the loss of a golden ring with a diamond had already been notified to them.
But then they looked at the stone and said to him:" My good man, you know very well that it's glass and not diamond.
How much did they give you for that diamond ?
We know very well your kind of honest finder."
In the end it came out that another man had lost a gold ring with a false diamond, a kind of family heirloom, but the tailor sat three days in prison all the same, because he got het up and insulted a policeman.
He was given the legal reward of ten per cent, which was one crown twenty hellers because that trash was worth twelve crowns, but he threw it in the gentleman's face.
The gentleman then sued him for insulting his honour, so he got another ten crowns fine.
Afterwards he used to say everywhere that every honest finder deserves twenty-five strokes, let them flog him black and blue, flog him publicly so that people should remember and take a lesson from it. I don't think that anyone'll bring our tabernacle back, even though it has the regimental crest on the back, because no one wants to have anything to do with army property.
They'd rather throw it in the water somewhere, so as not to have further complications with it. Yesterday at the pub, The Golden Wreath, I spoke to a man from the country. He was fifty-six and was going to the office of the district hejtman r in Nova Paka to ask why they had requisitioned his carriage.
On the way back, when they had thrown him out of the hejtman's office, he had a look at the baggage train which had just come in and was standing on the square.
A young man asked him to wait a moment by the horses, which were to fetch tinned goods for the army, and then he never came back.
When the baggage train moved off this chap had to go with them and found himself in Hungary, where he in his turn asked someone to wait by the baggage train in his place. It was only in this way that he saved himself, otherwise they'd have dragged him off to Serbia.
When he arrived he looked absolutely terrified and would never have anything to do with army property any more.'
In the evening they received a visit from the pious chaplain who had wanted to serve the drumhead mass for the sappers that morning.
He was a fanatic who wanted to bring everyone close to God.
When he had been a catechist he had developed religious feelings in children by slapping their faces and there had appeared from time to time in various journals articles about 'the sadistic catechist', 'the slapping catechist'.
He was convinced that a child learns the catechism best with the help of the birch.
He limped a little on one foot, which had been caused by a visit made to him by the father of one of his pupils, whose face he had slapped for having expressed certain doubts about the Holy Trinity. He got three slaps on the face himself. One for God the Father, a second for God the Son and a third for the Holy Ghost.
Today he had come to lead his colleague Katz on to the right path and to have a heart-to-heart talk with him.
He began it with the remark:
'I'm surprised that you've got no crucifix hanging here.
Where do you say your breviary prayers?
And there's not a single portrait of the saints on the walls of your room.
What's that hanging over your bed?'
Katz smiled: