Behind the woman came a boy who had a portfolio under his arm and who was sobbing.
“What has happened?” asked my father. A neighbor replied, that the man was a mason who had fallen from the fourth story while at work. The bearers of the litter halted for a moment. Many turned away their faces in horror. I saw the schoolmistress of the red feather supporting my mistress of the upper first, who was almost in a swoon. At the same moment I felt a touch on the elbow; it was the little mason, who was ghastly white and trembling from head to foot. He was certainly thinking of his father. I was thinking of him, too. I, at least, am at peace in my mind while I am in school: I know that my father is at home, seated at his table, far removed from all danger; but how many of my companions think that their fathers are at work on a very high bridge or close to the wheels of a machine, and that a movement, a single false step, may cost them their lives! They are like so many sons of soldiers who have fathers in the battle. The little mason gazed and gazed, and trembled more and more, and my father noticed it and said:—
“Go home, my boy; go at once to your father, and you will find him safe and tranquil; go!”
The little mason went off, turning round at every step. And in the meanwhile the crowd had begun to move again, and the woman to shriek in a way that rent the heart, “He is dead! He is dead! He is dead!”
“No, no; he is not dead,” people on all sides said to her. But she paid no heed to them, and tore her hair. Then I heard an indignant voice say, “You are laughing!” and at the same moment I saw a bearded man staring in Franti’s face. Then the man knocked his cap to the ground with his stick, saying:—
“Uncover your head, you wicked boy, when a man wounded by labor is passing by!”
The crowd had already passed, and a long streak of blood was visible in the middle of the street.
THE PRISONER.
Friday, 17th.