Only after a pause Joseph inquired: “Then, when would you like to shift your things?”
“Well, what thinkest thou, aged wife of my bosom, when are we to be banished?” inquired old Loyka.
“Well, if it has to be, perhaps the sooner it is done the better”, said Joseph’s mother, thinking at the same time that her son would say that there was no need of shifting just yet.
“As you will”, said Joseph. “I will send the servants at once to help you to remove your things.” He turned the matter in this way, so that he might still appear in the light of a dutiful son.
“Send them, Joseph, send them”, said old Loyka, and on this Joseph departed.
But old Loyka did not tarry for the servants. He at once began to drag from the wall chests and drawers, and to remove the chairs from their places by the table, and all in as much haste as though an enemy was approaching and everything had to be cleared out of the way within an hour.
Then came the servants into the apartment to assist; but old Loyka thanked them with a kind of mock reverence for their zeal, and requested them to send Vena to him who would help him best, and would also season his work with some wise saws and maxims.
So, then, Vena came, and scarcely had he appeared in the doorway before he exclaimed: “See, see, pantata, might you not just as well have let yourself be ousted that day when your son had got you half turned out of doors? What work we had to set all straight again—and all in vain. But if it must be so, then the Lord God help you.”
Old Loyka paused beside a chest, and said, “Prithee, how sayest thou? It seems to me that thou dost completely pity me?”
“Pantata,” answered Vena, “I do pity you. I pity every one as soon a he is pensioned off. I ever jeered at you when you evilly entreated the pensioner on your bounty, and I pitied him, your own father, while it went on. If I could have remembered how your father played the hospodar, I should have pitied the pensioner on his bounty, and if I live to see Joseph pensioned off, I shall begin to pity him, and I shall give it his successor—perhaps his son. Oh! ye peasant proprietors! how ill you regulate your affairs. Come, move out of the way, old tea-chest”, he said, turning abruptly towards Loyka, as though he meant him by this expression.
