n. 'Where is the monkey?--a spot
of coffee--one cannot be genial on both sides--everything in life has a
right and a wrong side--for example, the university clock--but if I
cannot swim, let me come out--I am going to the circus--I know very well
that you are standing there grinning at me, Cucumis--but I can leap
through the hoop, I can--and if that professor who is standing smoking
at my paraffin lamp had only conscientiously referred to _corpus juris_,
I should not now be lying here--in my night-shirt in the middle of Karl
Johan's Gade [Footnote: A principal street of Christiania.]--but--' Then
I sank into that deep, dreamless slumber which only falls to the lot of
an evil conscience when one is very young.

I was in the saddle early next morning.

I don't know if the devil ever had shoes on, but I must suppose he had,
for his inspectors were in their boots, and they creaked past me, where
I sat in my misery with my face to the wall.

A professor walked round the rooms and looked at the victims.
Occasionally he nodded and smiled encouragingly, as his eye fell on one
of those miserable lick-spittles who frequent the lectures; but when he
discovered me, the smile vanished, and his ice-cold stare seemed to
write upon the wall over my head: 'Mene, mene! [Footnote: Dan. v. 25.]
Wretch, I know thee not!'

A pair of inspectors walked creakily up to the professor and fawned upon
him; I heard them whispering behind my chair. I ground my teeth in
silent wrath at the thought that these contemptible creatures were paid
for--yes, actually made their living by torturing me and some of my best
friends.

The door opened; a glimmering yellow light fell upon the white faces; it
called to mind 'The Victims of Terrorism' in Luxembourg. Then all again
became dark, and the black-robed emissary of the College flitted through
the room like a bat, with the famous white document in his claws.

He began to read.

Never in my life had I been less inclined for leaping; and yet I started
violently at the first words. 'The monkey!' I had almost shouted; for he
it was--it was evidently the coffee-stain on page 496. The paper bore
precisely upon what I had read with so much energy the preceding night.

And I began to write. After a short, but superior and assured preamble,
I introduced the high-sounding words of Schweigaard, 'One might thus
certainly assume,' etc., and hurried down the left page, with unabated
vigour down the right, reached t