there till morning with
loose girls. So I break into fragments every violin I find. I don't ask
whether it was dear; I dash it to the ground. I have already smashed
violins of high value."

Grandmother saw it would be wiser not to allow Lorand to answer, so she
hastened to anticipate him:

"Why, it is not the elder boy, sir, who plays the violin, but this
younger one; besides, neither has been so trained as to wish to go to
any undesirable place of amusement."

"That does not matter. The little one has still less need of scraping.
Besides, I know the student; at home he makes saintly faces, as if he
would not disturb water, but when once let loose, be it in an inn, be it
in a coffee-house, there he will sit beside his beer, and join in a
competition, to see who is the greatest tippler, shout and sing
'Gaudeamus igitur.' That is why I don't allow students to carry violins
under their top-coats to inns, under any circumstances. I break the
violin in pieces, and have the top-coat cut into a covert-coat. A
student with a top-coat! That's only for an army officer. Then, I cannot
suffer anyone to wear sharp-pointed boots which are especially made for
dancing; flat-toed boots are for honest men; no one must come to my
school in pointed boots, for I put his foot on the bench and cut away
the points."

Grandmother hurried her visit to prevent Lorand having an opportunity of
giving answer to the worthy man, who carried his zeal in the defence of
morality to such a pitch as to break up violins, have top-coats cut
down, and cut off the points of pointed boots.

It was a good habit of mine (long, long ago, in my childhood days), to
regard as sacred anything a man, who had the right to my obedience,
might say. When we came away from the director's presence, I whispered
to Lorand in a distressed tone:

"Your boots seem to me a little too pointed."

"Henceforward I shall have them made still more pointed," replied
Lorand,--an answer with which I was not at all satisfied.

In my eyes every serious man was surrounded by a "nimbus" of
infallibility; no one had ever enlightened me on the fact that
serious-minded men had themselves once been young, and had learned the
student jargon of Heidelberg; that this director himself, after a noisy
youth, had arrived at the idea that every young man has malicious
propensities, and that what seems good in him is only make-believe, and
so he must be treated with the severity of military disc