As a schoolmaster Antonio was unconventional. José could neither read nor write his native language: but the monk began by teaching him Latin. He taught José to form large capital letters, which came much easier than a cursive script to his rough hands. At the very first lesson the pupil learned how to write, spell, and pronounce _pater_ and _mater_, and how to translate these words in the light of the Portuguese _padre_ and _madre_. Within a week, having mastered the present indicative of _amo_ and also the first and second declensions of nouns, he could print on the board _Pater amat filium_, with the Portuguese equivalent _O padre ama o filho_ in the line below. Antonio omitted mention of exceptional genders or inflexions, and discreetly concealed the existence of the subjunctive mood. He did not attempt to impart the Latin of Cicero but only a rough-and-ready _lingua rustica_ which he hoped to polish at his leisure into the language of the Missal and the Breviary. Pride in his classical scholarship led José, one day of Lent, into an indiscretion. Upon a barn-door he carved deeply with his knife "Pater Antonius" in big letters and "Josephus" in smaller characters underneath. Antonio made him place a new panel in the door, after cutting out and burning the old one; and, at the same time, he reminded him sternly how he had sworn never to let fall the remotest hint that his master was a monk. To guard against any fatal slip of José's tongue, Antonio forbade his servant from that hour to call him Father in any circumstances whatsoever. José's face fell, and he said dolefully: "I'd been hoping, Father--I mean, Senhor--to make my Easter confession to your Reverence--I mean, to your Worship. Yes, and I'd been hoping that your Rever--that your Worship might be saying his Easter Mass in the abbey chapel and that I might serve it." Antonio knew that he would only bewilder the honest fellow's mind if he attempted to explain confessors' faculties; and that it would be still worse to admit that he, though a choir-monk, had not yet said his first Mass. So he simply shook his head, and replied: "No, José, we must fulfil our Easter duties, both of us, in the parish church. These are bad times for monks in Portugal. And remember, above all, that you must give up calling me 'Your Reverence' and 'Father.'" Nevertheless the priest allowed the layman to share much of his religious life. Before they parted for the night they told their beads antiphonally. At dinner, when Antonio had said his Order's two-word grace before meat, _Benedictus benedicat_, he would edify José by relating some miracle or heroic act of the saint for the day. On the mornings of Sundays and days of obligation they tramped to the parish Mass together; and in the evenings they stole into the dim abbey and performed their pious exercises in choir.