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his hand with a gesture of despair and pointing to Schweik said to the keepers : "Let this man have his clothes again and put him into Section 3 in the first passage. Then one of you can come back and take all his papers into the office. And tell them there to settle it quickly, because we don't want to have him on our hands for long."
    The doctors cast another crushing glance at Schweik, who
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    deferentially retreated backward to the door, bowing with unction the while. From the moment when the keepers received orders to return Schweik's clothes to him, they no longer showed the slightest concern for him. They told him to get dressed and one of them took him to Ward No. 3 where, for the few days it took to complete his written ejection in the office, he had an opportunity of carrying on his agreeable observations. The disappointed doctors reported that he was "a malingerer of weak intellect," and as they discharged him before lunch, it caused quite a little scene. Schweik declared that a man cannot be ejected from a lunatic asylum without having been given his lunch first. This disorderly behaviour was stopped by a police officer who had been summoned by the asylum porter and who conveyed Schweik to the commissariat of police.
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    5.
    Schweik at the Commissariat of Police.
    Schweik's bright sunny days in the asylum were followed by hours laden with persecution. Police Inspector Braun arranged the meeting with Schweik as brutally as if he were a Roman hangman during the delightful reign of Nero. Just as they used to say in harsh tones: "Throw this rascal of a Christian to the lions," Inspector Braun said : "Shove him in clink."
    Not a word more or less. But as he said it, the eyes of Inspector Braun shone with a strange and perverse joy.
    Schweik bowed and said with a certain pride : "I'm ready, gentlemen. I suppose that clink means being in a cell and that's not so bad."
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    "Here, not so much of your lip," replied the police officer, whereupon Schweik remarked :
    "I'm an easy-going sort of chap, and grateful for anything you do for me."
    In the cell a man was sitting on a bench, deep in meditation. He sat there listlessly, and from his appearance it was obvious that when the key grated in the lock of the cell he did not imagine this to be the token of approaching liberty.
    "Good-day to you, sir," said Schweik, sitting down by his side on the bench. "I wonder what time it can be?"
    "Time is not my master," retorted the meditative man.
    "It's not so bad here," resumed Schweik. "Why, they took the trouble to plane the wood this bench is made of."
    The solemn man did not reply. He stood up and began to walk rapidly to and fro in the tiny space between door and bench, as if he were in a hurry to save something.
    Schweik meanwhile inspected with interest the inscriptions daubed upon the walls. There was one inscription in which an anonymous prisoner had vowed a life-and-death struggle with the police. The wording was : "You won't half cop it." Another had written : "Rats to you, fatheads." Another merely recorded a plain fact : "I was locked up here on June 5, 1913, and got fair treatment." Next to this some poetic soul had inscribed the verses :
    I sit in sorrow by the stream. The sun is hid behind the hill. I watch the uplands as they gleam, Where my beloved tarries still.
    The man who was now running to and fro between door and bench, as if he were anxious to win a Marathon race, came to a standstill, and sat down breathless in his old place, sank his head in his hands and suddenly shouted :
    "Let me out !"
    Then, talking to himself: "No, they won't let me out, they won't, they won't. I've been here since six o'clock this morning."
    He then became unexpectedly communicative. He rose up and inquired of Schweik :
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    "You don't happen to have a strap on you so that I could end it all?"
    "Pleased to oblige," answered Schweik, undoing his strap. "I've never seen a man hang himself with a strap in a cell."
    "It's a