There were many cases like that and even after that they went and quartered the chap or stuck him on a stake somewhere near the Museum.
And if a chap like that was only thrown into a dungeon he felt as if he were reborn.
'Nowadays it's fun being locked up,' Svejk continued with relish.
'There's no quartering, no Spanish boots.
We've got bunks, a table, a bench. We're not all squashed together like sardines: we get soup; they give us bread and bring us a jug of water. We've got our latrines right under our snouts.
You can see progress in everything.
It's true that it's a bit far to the interrogation room. You've got to go along more than three corridors and up one staircase, but on the other hand it's clean and lively in the corridors.
They bring one person here, another there -young, old, male and female.
You can be glad that at least you're not alone here.
Everyone goes his own sweet way and no one need be afraid that in the office they'll tell him:
"Well, we've considered your case and tomorrow you'll be quartered or burnt.
The choice is up to you."
That certainly wasn't an easy choice to make, and I think, gentlemen, that many of us at a time like that would be completely flummoxed by it.
Yes, nowadays things have improved for our good.'
He had just finished his defence of the modern way of imprisoning citizens, when a warder opened the door and shouted:
'Svejk, get dressed and come for interrogation.'
'I shall indeed,' answered Svejk.
'I've got no objection, but I'm afraid that there may be some mistake here.
I've already been thrown out from interrogation once.
And I'm afraid that these other gentlemen who are here with me will be cross with me if I go twice for interrogation when they haven't been there even once the whole evening.
They might be jealous of me.'
'Get out and stop talking drivel,' was the reply to Svejk's gentlemanly utterance.
Svejk again found himself face to face with the gentleman of criminal type, who without beating about the bush asked him harshly and irrevocably:
'Do you confess to everything?'
Svejk fixed his good blue eyes on the ruthless man and said softly:
'If you want me to confess, your worship, I shall.
It can't do me any harm.
But if you say:
"Svejk, don't confess to anything", I'll wriggle and wriggle out of it until there isn't a breath left in my body.'
The severe gentleman wrote something on the documents and handing Svejk a pen invited him to sign it.
And Svejk signed Bretschneider's deposition with the following addition:
All the above-named accusations against me are founded on fact.
Josef Svejk
When he had signed, he turned to the severe gentleman:
'Have I got to sign anything else?
Or am I to come back in the morning?'
'In the morning you'll be taken off to the criminal court' was the answer.
'At what time, your worship? So that I don't oversleep, for Christ's sake.'
'Get out!' For the second time that day there was a roar from the other side of the table in front of which Svejk was standing.
Returning to his new home behind bars Svejk told the policeman who was escorting him:
'Everything here goes like a house on fire.'
As soon as the door closed behind him, his fellow prisoners deluged him with questions of all kinds, to which he replied clearly:
'I've just admitted that I might have murdered the Archduke Ferdinand.'
Six men crouched in horror under the lice-ridden blankets.
Only the Bosnian said:
'Dobro dosli.'
1 As he lay down on the bunk Svejk said:
'It's stupid that we haven't got an alarm clock here.'
But in the morning he was woken up without an alarm clock, and at six o'clock sharp he was carried away to the criminal court in the Green Antony.
'The early bird catches the worm,' said Svejk to his fellow travellers when the Green Antony drove out of the gates of police headquarters.