Chapter 12 - Page 2

he remarked, without looking at me, but
proceeding to explain to Ikonin the point on which he had
questioned him.

"That will do," he added, and I saw him put down four marks to
Ikonin in his register. "Come!" I thought to myself. "He cannot
be so strict after all."

When Ikonin had taken his departure the professor spent fully
five minutes--five minutes which seemed to me five hours--in
setting his books and tickets in order, in blowing his nose, in
adjusting and sprawling about on his chair, in gazing down the
hall, and in looking here, there, and everywhere--in doing
everything, in fact, except once letting his 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