sat beside the table looking with vacant gaze at the empty bed.
When the tenant came to him the next day, he was still sitting at the table. It seemed to her he had grown twenty years older and that his hair had suddenly become white. He turned and spoke to her.
“Too much is too much!” he said in a queer hoarse voice. “To go away and stay away,—whoever heard of such a thing? But since she wanted to go, let her stay there. I will do my work here. I’ll get along without her.”
“You are right,” the tenant lauded him. “Let her stay on her pilgrimage if she wants to. We, again, shall stay here. If you are grieved that she left, you’ll punish her best by not showing it in the least. Next time, she’ll think it over more carefully before she sets out for some place. Just have a little drink and wash down your trouble.”
And the tenant brought Matýsek glasses, cards and his pipe just exactly as Barka had ordered her to do. Matýsek quickly seized upon the glass, cards and the pipe with eager hands. But the glass remained full, the pipe went out while he held it in his mouth and of a sudden he did not even know how to name the cards. Alas, he had told her he could not get along without her and yet she had gone and left him. It was no wonder that again he never lay down in bed and remained sitting at the table all night, muttering in a strange voice, “What is too much is too much!”
