Chapter 12

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 air had been
full of rumours concerning the tribulations of candidates who had
gone up before me: rumours of how one young fellow had been
accorded a nought, another one a single mark only, a third one
greeted with abuse and threatened with expulsion, and so forth.
Only Semenoff and the first gymnasium student had, as usual, gone
up quietly, and returned to their seats with five marks credited
to their names. Already I felt a prescience of disaster when
Ikonin and myself found ourselves summoned to the little table at
which the terrible professor sat in solitary grandeur.

The terrible professor turned out to be a little thin, bilious-
looking man with hair long and greasy and a face expressive of
extraordinary sullenness. Handing Ikonin a copy of Cicero's
Orations, he bid him translate. To my great astonishment Ikonin
not only read off some of the Latin, but even managed to construe
a few lines to the professor's prompting. At the same time,
conscious of my superiority over such a feeble companion, I could
not help smiling a little, and even looking rather contemptuous,
when it came to a question of analysis, and Ikonin, as on
previous occasions, plunged into a silence which promised never
to end. I had hoped to please the professor by that knowing,
slightly sarcastic smile of mine, but, as a matter of fact, I
contrived to do quite the contrary.

"Evidently you know better than he, since you are laughing," he
said to me in bad Russian. "Well, we shall see. Tell me the
answer, then."

Later I learnt that the professor was Ikonin's guardian, and that
Ikonin actually lived with him. I lost no time in answering the
question in syntax which had been put to Ikonin, but the
professor only pulled a long face and turned away from me.

"Well, your turn will come presently, and then we shall see how
much you know,"