Goodbye, my boy, and don't ever lead it across Havlicek Square, in case any misfortune should happen.
If you should ever need another dog, you know where I live.'
Svejk let Max sleep very long and in the meantime bought half a pound ofliver at the butcher's, boiled it and waited until Max woke up, letting it smell a piece of warm liver.
Max began to lick its lips in its sleep, then it stretched, sniffed the liver and ate it up.
After that it went to the door and repeated its experiments with the door handle.
'Max!' Svejk called to it. 'Come here!'
It came distrustfully.
Svejk took it on his lap, stroked it, and Max for the first time wagged the remains of its clipped tail in a friendly way, snapped gently at Svejk's hand, held it in its jaws and looked very wisely at Svejk, as though it was going to say:
'There's nothing to be done. I know I've lost.'
Svejk went on stroking it and began to talk to it in a tender tone:
'There was once a doggie who was called Fox and it lived with a colonel. The maid took it for a walk and a gentleman came and stole it.
Fox came to the army to a lieutenant and they gave it the name of Max. Max, give me your paw!
Now you see, you bastard, that we shall be good friends if you'll be obedient and good.
Otherwise you'll have a hell of a war.'
Max jumped down from Svejk's lap and began happily to jump up on him.
By the evening when the lieutenant returned from the barracks Svejk and Max were the very best of friends.
Looking at Max Svejk thought philosophically:
'After all, by and large every soldier's stolen from his home too.'
Lieutenant Lukas was very agreeably surprised when he saw the dog, which also manifested great pleasure when it again saw a man with a sabre.
In reply to the question where it came from and how much it cost, Svejk said with perfect composure that the dog had been given him by a friend, who had just been called up.
'Good, Svejk,' said the lieutenant, playing with Max.
'On the first of the month you'll get fifty crowns from me for the dog.'
'I can't accept that, sir.'
'Svejk,' said the lieutenant sternly, 'when you began your service with me I explained to you that you must obey all my orders.
When I tell you that you'll get fifty crowns, you must take them and spend them on drink.
What will you do, Svejk, with these fifty crowns?'
'Humbly report, sir, I shall spend them on drink according to your orders.'
'And in case I should forget this, Svejk, I order you to report to me that I have to give you fifty crowns for the dog.
Do you understand?
Are you sure the dog hasn't got fleas?
You'd better give it a bath and comb it.
Tomorrow I'm on duty, but the day after I'll take it for a walk.'
While Svejk was giving Max a bath, its former owner, the colonel, was thundering at home and threatening that he would bring the thief before a court-martial and have him shot, hung, gaoled for twenty years and quartered.
'Bugger that blasted bloody swine,' could be heard in German all over the colonel's apartment so that the windows rattled.
'I'll be even with that murderous assassin.'
Over the heads of Svejk and Lieutenant Lukas a catastrophic storm was brewing.
15
Catastrophe
CoLONEL FRIEDRICH KRAUS, who bore the additional title of von Zillergut after a village in the district of Salzburg which his ancestors had already completely fleeced in the eighteenth century, was a most venerable idiot.
Whenever he was relating something, he could only speak in platitudes, asking whether everybody could understand the most primitive expressions:
'And so a window, gentlemen, yes.
Well, do you know what a window is? ' Or:
'A track which has a ditch on each side of it is called a road.
Yes, gentlemen.
Now, do you know what a ditch is?
A ditch is an excavation on which several people work. It is a hollow.
Yes.
They work with picks.
Now, do you know what a pick is?'
He suffered from a mania for explanations, which he gave with the enthusiasm of an inventor expounding his work.