The Good Soldier Svejk Read Online Free PDF Page A

had to, why, I just did what they told me. It's not likely I'm going to quarrel with them over my own signature. I shouldn't be doing myself any good that way. Things have got to be done in proper order."
    "Do you feel quite well, Mr. Schweik?"
    "I wouldn't say quite well, your worship. I've got rheumatism and I'm using embrocation for it."
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    The old gentleman again gave a kindly smile. "Suppose we were to have you examined by the medical authorities."
    "I don't think there's much the matter with me and it wouldn't be fair to waste the gentlemen's time. There was one doctor examined me at the police headquarters."
    "All the same, Mr. Schweik, we'll have a try with the medical authorities. We'll appoint a little commission, we'll have you placed under observation, and in the meanwhile you'll have a nice rest. Just one more question : According to the statement you're supposed to have said that now a war's going to break out soon."
    "Yes, your worship, it'll break out at any moment now."
    "And do you ever feel run down at all?"
    "No, sir, except that once I nearly got run down by a motor car, but that's years and years ago."
    That concluded the cross-examination. Schweik shook hands with the legal dignitary and on his return to the cell he said to his neighbours :
    "Now they're going to have me examined by the medical authorities on account of this murder of Archduke Ferdinand."
    "I've already been examined by the medical authorities," said one young man, "that was when I was had up in court over some carpets. They said I was weak-minded. Now I've embezzled a steam-threshing machine and they can't touch me. My lawyer told me yesterday that once I've been reported weak-minded I can make capital out of it for the rest of my life."
    "I don't trust the medical authorities," remarked a man of intelligent appearance. "Once when I forged some bills of exchange I went to a lecture by Dr. Heveroch, and when they nabbed me I pretended to have an epileptic fit, just like Dr. Heveroch described it. I bit the leg of one of the medical authorities on the commission and drank the ink out of an inkpot. But just because I bit a man in the calf they reported I was quite well, and so I was done for."
    "I am not afraid of their examination," declared Schweik. "When I was in the army, I was examined by a veterinary surgeon and I got on first rate."
    "The medical authorities are a rotten lot," announced a small,
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    misshapen man. "Not long ago they happened to dig up a skeleton on my field and the medical authorities said the skeleton had been murdered by some blunt instrument forty years previously. Now I'm only thirty-eight, but they locked me up, though I've got a birth certificate, a certificate of baptism and a copy of the entry in the parish register."
    "I think," said Schweik, "that we ought to look at everything fair and square. Anybody can make a mistake, and the more he thinks about a thing, the more mistakes he's bound to make. The medical authorities are human beings, and human beings have got their failings. That's like once at Nusle, just by the bridge, a gentleman came up to me one night when I was on my way home and hit me over the head with a horsewhip and when I was lying on the ground he flashed a light on me and said : 'I've made a mistake, that's not him.' And it made him so wild to think he'd made a mistake that he landed me another whack across the back. It's just in the course of nature for a man to keep on making mistakes till he's dead. That's like the gentleman who found a mad dog half-frozen one night and took it home with him and shoved it into his wife's bed. As soon as the dog got warm and came to, it bit the whole family, and the youngest baby that was still in the cradle got torn to pieces and gobbled up by it. Or I can give you another example of a mistake that was made by a cabinetmaker who lived in the same house as me. He opened the church at Podol with his latchkey, thinking he was at home, undressed in