But Dr. Mantelsack was all too certain of the painful fact.
“Give me your book,” he said coldly.
Petersen clung to his book; he raised it up in both hands and went on
protesting. He stammered, his tongue grew thick. “Believe me, Herr
Doctor. There is nothing in the book--I have no crib--I have not
deceived you--I have always been honourable--”
“Give me your book,” repeated the master, stamping his foot.
Then Petersen collapsed, and his face grew grey.
“Very well,” said he, and delivered up his book. “Here it is. Yes,
there is a crib in it. You can see for yourself; there it is. But I
haven’t used it,” he suddenly shrieked, quite at random.
Dr. Mantelsack ignored this idiotic lie, which was rooted in despair.
He drew out the crib, looked at it with an expression of extreme
disgust, as if it were a piece of decaying offal, thrust it into his
pocket, and threw the volume of Ovid contemptuously back on Petersen’s
desk.
“Give me the class register,” he said in a hollow voice.
Adolf Todtenhaupt dutifully fetched it, and Petersen received a mark
for dishonesty which effectually demolished his chances of being sent
up at Easter. “You are the shame of the class,” said Dr. Mantelsack.
Petersen sat down. He was condemned. His neighbour avoided contact with
him. Every one looked at him with a mixture of pity, aversion, and
disgust. He had fallen, utterly and completely, because he had been
found out. There was but one opinion as to Petersen, and that was that
he was, in very truth, the shame of the class. They recognized and
accepted his fall, as they had the rise of Timm and Buddenbrook and the
unhappy Mumme’s mischance. And Petersen did too.
Thus most of this class of twenty-five young folk, being of sound and
strong constitution, armed and prepared to wage the battle of life as
it is, took things just as they found them, and did not at this moment
feel any offence or uneasiness. Everything seemed to them to be quite
in order. But one pair of eyes, little Johann’s, which stared gloomily
at a point on Hans Hermann Kilian’s broad back, were filled, in their
blue-shadowed depths, with abhorrence, fear, and revulsion. The lesson
went on. Dr. Mantelsack called on somebody, anybody--he had lost all
desire to test any one. And after Adolf Todtenhaupt, another pupil, who
was but moderately prepared, and did not even know what “_patula Jovis
arbore_” meant, had been called on, Buddenbrook had to say it. He said
it in a low voice, without looking up, because Dr. Mantelsack asked
him, and he received a nod of the head for the answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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