第18章

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," 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."