ay, in a novel occupation, and by dinner-time not a frog
was to be seen; but long, long afterwards, on a moist evening, fugitives
from the general proscription might be seen making their silent way
across the quadrangle, and croakings were heard at night-time, which
might (as Homer relates of his frogs) have disturbed Minerva, only that
the goddess of wisdom, in chambers collegiate, sleeps usually pretty
sound.

The "business of the stays," however, bid fair to supersede the business
of the frogs, in the dean's record of my supposed crimes; and as I fully
intended to clear myself, even to his satisfaction, of any suspicion
which might attach to me from the possession of such questionable
articles so soon as our theatre closed for the season, I resolved that
my successful defence from this last imputation would be an admirable
ground on which to assume the dignity of a martyr, to appeal against all
uncharitable conclusions from insufficient premises, and come out as the
personification of injured innocence throughout my whole college career.

When my interview with the dean was over, I ordered some luncheon up to
Leicester's rooms, where, as I expected, I found most of my own "set"
collected, in order to hear the result. A private conference with the
official aforesaid seldom boded good to the party so favoured; the dean
seldom made his communications so agreeable as he might have done. In
college, as in most other societies, La Rochefoucauld's maxim holds
good, that "there is always something pleasant in the misfortunes of
one's friends;" and whenever an unlucky wight did get into a row, he
might pretty confidently reckon upon being laughed at. In fact,
undergraduates considered themselves as engaged in a war of stratagem
against an unholy alliance of deans, tutors, and proctors; and in every
encounter the defeated party was looked upon as the deluded victim of
superior ingenuity--as having been "done," in short. So, if a lark
succeeded, the authorities aforesaid were decidedly done, and laughed
at accordingly; if it failed, why, the other party were done, and there
was still somebody to laugh at. No doubt, the jest was richer in the
first case supposed; but in the second there was the additional gusto,
so dear to human philanthropy, of having the victim present, and
enjoying his discomfiture, which, in the case of the dons being the
sufferers, was denied us. It may seem to argue something of a want of
sympathy to find