spare, and spared as little as it
could. On the left against the wall is a raised desk for the candidate.
At the end, on a platform before a bookcase, sit the six examiners in red
robes, capes with three bands of ermine, and gold-laced caps. Between the
candidate's desk and the door is a little enclosure for spectators, of
whom there were about thirty when I entered.

My performance, which had a chance of being brilliant, was only fair.

The three first examiners had read my essay, especially M. Flamaran, who
knew it well and had enjoyed its novel and audacious propositions. He
pursed up his mouth preparatory to putting the first question, like an
epicure sucking a ripe fruit. And when at length he opened it, amid the
general silence, it was to carry the discussion at once up to such
heights of abstraction that a good number of the audience, not
understanding a word of it, stealthily made for the door.

Each successive answer put fresh spirit into him.

"Very good," he murmured, "very good; let us carry it a step farther. Now
supposing--"

And, the demon of logic at his heels, we both went off like inspired
lunatics into a world of hypotheses where never man had set foot. He was
examining no longer, he was inventing and intoxicating himself with
deductions. No one was right or wrong. We were reasoning about chimeras,
he radiant, I cool, before his gently tickled colleagues. I never
realized till then what imagination a jurist's head could contain.

Perspiring freely, he set down a white mark, having exceeded by ten
minutes the recognized time for examination.

The second examiner was less enthusiastic. He made very few suppositions,
and devoted all his art to convicting me of a contradiction between page
seventeen and page seventy-nine. He kept repeating, "It's a serious
matter, sir, very serious." But, nevertheless, he bestowed a second white
mark on me. I only got half white from the third. The rest of the
examination was taken up in matters extraneous to the subject of my
essay, a commonplace trial of strength, in which I replied with
threadbare arguments to outworn objections.

And then it ended. Two hours had passed.

I left the room while the examiners made up their minds.

A few friends came up to me.

"Congratulations, old man, I bet on six whites."

"Hallo, Larive! I never noticed you."

"I quite believe you; you didn't notice anybody, you still look
bewildered. Is it the emotion inseparable from