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A STORY OF BOHEMIAN LOVE
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son, the Hlohov servants gave vent to their inveterate spite against the porter’s family. No one could with justice say anything against the family; its members had always been modest and industrious, but they were retiring, avoided merry-makings, and were always sad. It was just because of their high moral tone, though they were never ostentatious in it, that they were disliked; their virtue became a reproach to those in whom it was conspicuously absent. It was, then, no small delight for the enemies of the porter to see him so mentally enfeebled that he did, when provoked by them, many foolish things and talked all kinds of nonsense. They laughed at him most when, on his beginning to declare the near approach of the judgment day for sins committed in this world, which God could endure no longer, he recited in a very confused way the Psalms of David or the Revelation of St. John; or when he confided to them in whispers and with mysterious gestures that the Felsenburks were not the real owners of Hlohov Castle, but that it belonged