agreed as to the manner in which they were to spend the festive evening. The preparations for that evening might be heard discussed on the river-bank, on the water, and wherever people were engaged at their work. Only when Francis came to the Quay these discussions about the preparations for the day tacitly dropped.
But still Poldik heard all that was being prepared. However, he already treated the matter, or affected to treat it, as something wholly alien from himself, but none the less it stung him to the heart, and in his heart he felt as though a red-hot iron was piercing his very bosom. According to his own maxim, however, he would not have given a pipe of tobacco for Francis; but yet none but Francis was with her; somehow or other he managed to hold his own with Malka and to retain her always by his side. And the superior ability displayed by Francis in these respects was perhaps the most galling thing of all.
Thus the day drew near when Francis and Malka were to be plighted, and the evening drew near when in their honour was prepared on the Upper Moldau a festival of unusual splendour and seldom seen thereon.
Just as on that eventful Sunday morning when Malka and Francis first sailed out together, his boat was tricked out like a dandy, and in the evening glittered with divers lanterns that looked like roses, so, to-day, all the skiffs which were in Podskali were gaily bedizened and awaited in thick array until evening brought the happy pair among them. Scarcely had the first shadows descended upon the water, when all the skiffs glowed as it were with one single fire, distributed in a thousand different fragments. The glow broadened far over far over the river-banks, spanned the whole smooth surface of the Moldau, and shot its varied streams of light far into the star-bespangled skies.
And in the midst of it all sat Francis and Malka, a newly married couple.
The skiffs—as though they had been a single large vessel—crept slowly against the stream until they reached Vysehrad, until even those ancient walls and that ancient crag were tinged by the glow from the water, and looked like a stern face with a young smile on it. Immediately after this the compact body of boats fell to pieces, each skiff rode over the water by itself, and all circled round the exquisitely adorned skiff of the young married couple. On some of the skiffs music burst forth, on others singing and music succeeded one another, on all reigned mirth and jollity,
