"Slavia, Slavia! Thou name of sweet sound but of bitter memory; hundred times divided and destroyed, but yet more honored than ever.
"Much hast thou suffered, but ever hast thou survived the evil deeds of thy enemies, the evil ingratitude also of thy sons.
"While others have built on soft ground, thou hast established thy throne on the ruins of many centuries."
Here in a rich bass voice he broke forth into the Slovak national song: "Nad Tatrou sa bliska":
Above Tatra the lightnings flash,
The thunder wildly roars;
But fear not, brothers,
The skies will clear,
And the Slovak's time will come.
At the conclusion, a peculiar silence brooded in the room. Suddenly, little anxious twitchings might have been noticed. The singer turned. In the doorway stood the Notary with a wicked, sneering smile on his supercilious face.
CHAPTER II
MUSHROOM GATHERING
Jozef's home was one of the high-roofed houses whose gable ends faced the broad, whitish main street. It was made of unburnt bricks, plastered outside, with hand-made shingles on the roof. Each window was outlined in pale green and the entrance porch was quite ornamental, having a pretty conventional design, also in green, painted around the door. This, as well as the lines around the window, was the work of Jozef's mother, who enjoyed a certain reputation in the village because she had once been asked to paint some borders around the walls of the rooms of a girls' school in the city of Brno, the capital of Moravia.