eye rest upon me. Yet even that amount of dissimulation did
not seem to satisfy him, for he next opened a book, and pretended to
read it, for all the world as though I were not there at all. I moved a
little nearer him, and gave a cough.

"Ah, yes! You too, of course! Well, translate me something," he
remarked, handing me a book of some kind. "But no; you had better take
this," and, turning over the leaves of a Horace, he indicated to me a
passage which I should never have imagined possible of translation.

"I have not prepared this," I said.

"Oh! Then you only wish to answer things which you have got by heart, do
you? Indeed? No, no; translate me that."

I started to grope for the meaning of the passage, but each questioning
look which I threw at the professor was met by a shake of the head, a
profound sigh, and an exclamation of "No, no!" Finally he banged the
book to with such a snap that he caught his finger between the covers.
Angrily releasing it, he handed me a ticket containing questions in
grammar, and, flinging himself back in his chair, maintained a menacing
silence. I should have tried to answer the questions had not the
expression of his face so clogged my tongue that nothing seemed to come
from it right.

"No, no! That's not it at all!" he suddenly exclaimed in his horrible
accent as he altered his posture to one of leaning forward upon the
table and playing with the gold signet-ring which was nearly slipping
from the little finger of his left hand. "That is not the way to prepare
for serious study, my good sir. Fellows like yourself think that, once
they have a gown and a blue collar to their backs, they have reached the
summit of all things and become students. No, no, my dear sir. A subject
needs to be studied FUNDAMENTALLY," and so on, and so on.

During this speech (which was uttered with a clipped sort of intonation)
I went on staring dully at his lowered eyelids. Beginning with a fear
lest I should lose my place as third on the list, I went on to fear lest
I should pass at all. Next, these feelings became reinforced by a sense
of injustice, injured self-respect, and unmerited humiliation, while the
contempt which I felt for the professor as some one not quite (according
to my ideas) "comme il faut"--a fact which I deduced from the shortness,
strength, and roundness of his nails--flared up in me more and more and
turned all my other feelings to sheer animosity. Happening, presently,
to glance