was the Theory of Combinations!

"What have you got?" whispered Ikonin at this point.

I showed him.

"Oh, I know that," he said.

"Will you make an exchange, then?"

"No. Besides, it would be all the same for me if I did," he contrived to
whisper just as the professor called us up to the blackboard. "I don't
feel up to anything to-day."

"Then everything is lost!" I thought to myself. Instead of the brilliant
result which I had anticipated I should be for ever covered with
shame--more so even than Ikonin! Suddenly, under the very eyes of the
professor, Ikonin turned to me, snatched my ticket out of my hands, and
handed me his own. I looked at his ticket. It was Newton's Binomial!

The professor was a youngish man, with a pleasant, clever expression of
face--an effect chiefly due to the prominence of the lower part of his
forehead.

"What? Are you exchanging tickets, gentlemen?" he said.

"No. He only gave me his to look at, professor," answered Ikonin--and,
sure enough, the word "professor" was the last word that he uttered
there. Once again, he stepped backwards towards me from the table, once
again he looked at each of the professors in turn and then at myself,
once again he smiled faintly, and once again he shrugged his shoulders
as much as to say, "It is no use, my good sirs." Then he returned to the
desks. Subsequently, I learnt that this was the third year he had vainly
attempted to matriculate.

I answered my question well, for I had just read it up; and the
professor, kindly informing me that I had done even better than was
required, placed me fifth.

XII. MY EXAMINATION IN LATIN

All went well until my examination in Latin. So far, a gymnasium student
stood first on the list, Semenoff second, and myself third. On the
strength of it I had begun to swagger a little, and to think that, for
all my youth, I was not to be despised.

From the first day of the examinations, I had heard every one speak with
awe of the Professor of Latin, who appeared to be some sort of a wild
beast who battened on the financial ruin of young men (of those, that is
to say, who paid their own fees) and spoke only in the Greek and
Latin tongues. However, St. Jerome, who had coached me in Latin, spoke
encouragingly, and I myself thought that, since I could translate Cicero
and certain parts of Horace without the aid of a lexicon, I should do
no worse than the rest. Yet things proved otherwise. All the morning the
ai