"Certainly not!" he exclaimed for the third time, strode past Arthur to his desk, and after silently folding his white hands, explained that he was too much excited to begin with the customary prayers. And presently followed a stammering philippic--the professor always stammered when irritated--against that pest of youth, worldliness and hankering after pleasure, which chiefly infected precisely those upon whom rested the smallest portion of the spirit of Apollo and Pallas Athené. "He was a mild and humane man," he said, "and well mindful of the words of the poet, that it was well to lay seriousness aside at the proper time and place; ay, even at times to quaff the wine-cup and move the feet in the dance; but then the cause should be sufficient to justify the license--a Virgil must have returned from a far-off land, or a Cleopatra have freed the people from imminent peril by her voluntary, yet involuntary death. But how could any one who notoriously was one of the worst scholars--yes, might be styled absolutely the worst, unless one other"--here the professor gave a side-glance at me--"could claim this evil pre-eminence--how could such a one dare to clutch at a garland which should only encircle a brow dripping with the sweat of industry! Was he, the speaker, too strict? He thought not. Assuredly, no one could wish it more earnestly than he, and no one would rejoice more heartily than he, if the subject of his severe rebuke would even now give the proof of his innocence by translating without an error the glorious chorus of the _Antigone_, which was the theme of the morning's lecture. Von Zehren, commence!" Poor Arthur! I still see, after the lapse of so many years, his beautiful, but even then somewhat worn face, striving in vain to hold fast upon its lips the smile of aristocratic indifference with which he had listened to the professor's rebuke, as he took the book and read, not too fluently, a verse or two of the Greek. Even in this short reading the scornful smile gradually faded, and he glanced from under his dropped lids a look of beseeching perplexity towards his neighbor and Pylades. But how was it possible for me to help him; and who knew better than he how impossible it was? So the inevitable came to pass. He turned the "shaft of Helios" into a "shield of Æolus," and blundered on in pitiable confusion. The others announced their better knowledge by peals of laughter, and a grim smile of triumph over his discomfiture even played over the grave features of the professor. "The curs!" muttered Arthur with white lips, as he took his seat after the recitation had lasted a couple of minutes. "But why did you not prompt me?"