clerks in the office. Four clerks might have come, and neither singly nor altogether would they have dared to forge upon him—perhaps they would have been afraid to receive him even in the lock-up house.
Once the neighbours drove into Prague with wheat, and took Bartos with them as cashier. Bartos stopped at the tolbooth to pay the duty. How could the collector know that it was Bartos, the grave-digger! He paid no attention to him, and made as though he counted. “How much will it be?” cried Bartos with such vehemence that the paper fell out of the toll-collector’s hand. “Come, come, we will have no bullies here”, said the toll-collector. “A thousand curses! you are the bully”, said Bartos, and nothing more. The toll-collector also said nothing more, but his hand trembled with rage as he gave Bartos the change, and thus it happened that one “desetnik” fell on to the pavement outside his office. “There is a ‘desetnik’ missing”, says Bartos. “You have it on the ground”, says the tax-collector, and nudged himself into a certain amount of valiancy. “I pick up nothing from the ground”, says Bartos. The toll-collector must even shuffle out of his office, pick up the “desetnik”, and give it into Bartos’s hands. “There now I have all”, said Bartos, and as he quitted the tolbooth muttered loud enough for the toll-collector to hear, “I will teach people to throw money on the ground.”
Another time he went to an office for the purpose of drawing a sum of money and the cashier happened to be a new-comer, and thus did not know Bartos. This official said that he had the money at home in his house, that Bartos might go on in advance, and that he himself would follow him directly; Bartos went into the house. But the official did not come for a long time and Bartos began to grow impatient, and when the cashier did come he began to talk to his wife and did not notice Bartos. Bartos rose from his seat and began to open the windows in the room, he opened them all. The official begged to know what he was about. “If I have to wait,” said Bartos, “I must have fresh air; stinks are not for me.” Then the cashier’s wife began to interfere, and shrieked out, “Look at the red-hair’d ruffian!” “Yes, look at him,” retorted Bartos quickly, “and then look at Madame’s sweet double chin.”
This silenced the official’s chatter, and indeed his good lady’s, who hastily threw a handkerchief about her neck; after a few minutes Bartos had the money counted out to the last kreuzer.
