Barka inherited with the property a female tenant with four children. She was happy over this and at once embraced the little ones in her love, remembering her own widowed mother and the days of her orphaned childhood. But Matýsek was different.
He examined the widow and her children with an eye so severe that the tenant involuntarily hid behind Barka and the children began to shake with fear. Then he inquired if they understood properly who and what he was. When the poor things did not know what to answer, he told them that he was master in the home and that everyone must obey him, and when he ordered something done in the house or on the field or in the stable, it must be carried out to the hair. In order to confirm this by example, he sent out each child successively about five times for something or other which he had no use for and which the child then had to carry back.
The children hardly dared to breathe. “You’d like it, wouldn’t you?” continued Matýsek. “All day to be in idleness, to fear no one or nothing? But I’ll spoil all that for you. I’ll give you exercises and training until I teach you order.”
Barka was not at all opposed, for why shouldn’t he speak up to the children if it pleased him? And besides, even if he shouted, it didn’t injure them, and then, how grandly it suited him to act lordly!
The first day after the wedding she gave him an ample supply of coins to jingle in his pocket. He
