what you see. And then you only long to carry all misery and every disease, to take all the rejection upon yourself; you desire and thirst after this to satisfy yourself. You will not give to charity because that will not wipe out old wrongs; but you will be poor yourself. You yourself must be equally poor to wipe them out. You must be diseased, drunk, pursued, insulted, muddied, and morally low. You must reach the heights. You must reach the highest heights. Enough, you knew enough. Forget all. Now you must learn. But Vojtech,” turning suddenly with extraordinary kindness, “you want to go to bed, don’t you?”
“No. Not at all,” Vojtech assured him, eagerly.
“Go and lie down. I must write something. Go and sleep, please, you would only be in my way.”
“No, Karel,” said Vojtech, “I shall not sleep; but you can write. I shall only lie down so that I shan’t be in your way; but afterwards I have something to tell you.”
“That’s all right, only sleep,” repeated Karel, and sat down at the table, burying his head in his hands.
Stretched out quietly on the bed Vojtech fell to thinking about what he should say to his brother. He was puzzled and yet full of pity. He searched for some peculiarly kind words that would be like bright glances. Careful words like those we use to a sick person. Something with which he could both please and repay. With half, closed eyes he looked at his brother. He was bending over the table as though he were studying. He always used to study so hard and stubbornly. He always used to have such passionate pleasures which he would overcome by studying. He was so ambitious and yet so rash. The young drinker who stopped drinking altogether one day because he had decided to do so. Or he would decide to get up at five o’clock in the morning. Then he would get up and study while Vojtech, voluptuous and warmth-loving as a cat, snored between the blankets. “Vojtech, Vojtech, get up, it’s seven o’clock.” Vojtech pretends not to hear. But meanwhile he hears the scratching of a pen on paper, and is rather pleased that some living being is so near to him. For nothing in the world would he open his eyes. He did not wish to interrupt his dream. But it is not really a dream (Vojtech smiled) it actually happened to me when I was perhaps in the Fourth Class: some boys of the Seventh Class, Karel’s school-chums, took me into a vinarna—let me see,
