This would be subsequently discovered to be due to the newcomer himself, whom they would take at first to be a wild boar, but later discovery to be that rare creature known as a _bejaunus_, a creature of whom they had heard, but which they had never seen. After chaffing comments about his general ferocious aspect it would be suggested, with marked sympathy, that his horns might be removed by operation, the so-called _depositio_. The victim's face would then be smeared with some preparation, and certain formalities would be gone through with--clipping his ears, removal of his tusks, etc. Finally, in fear lest the mock operation should be fatal, the patient would be shriven; one of the students, feigning himself a priest, would put his ear to the dying man's mouth and then repeat his confession. The boy was made to accuse himself of all sorts of enormities, and finally it was exacted as penance that he should provide a sumptuous banquet for his new masters and comrades. This latter ceremony consisted of a procession headed by a master in academic dress, followed by students in masquerading costume. Certain further operative procedures were then gone through with, the beast was finally dehorned and his nose held to the grindstone, while a little later his chin was adorned with a beard made of burnt cork, and his wounded sensibilities assuaged by a dose of salt and wine. All this constituted a peculiar German custom, although some means of extorting money or bothering those who were initiated was practically universal. In Germany this ceremony of _depositio_ seems to have led later to the bullying and fagging of juniors by seniors, that gave rise to indignities while at the same time it more than exceeded in brutality anything of which we have read in the English grammar schools. These excesses reached their highest in the seventeenth century, and for a long time defied all efforts of both government and university authorities to suppress them. In southern France this initiation assumed somewhat different form. Here the freshman was treated as a criminal, and had to be tried for and released by purgation from the consequences of his original sin. At Avignon this purgation of freshmen was made the primary purpose of a religious fraternity formed under ecclesiastical sanction, and with a chapel in the Dominican church. (Rashdall). The preamble of its constitution piously boasted that its object was to put a stop to enormities, drunkenness and immorality, but its practices were at extreme variance with its avowed purposes.