The class was astounded; such an assumption of dignity had scarcely ever been seen, and who would have thought it of Placido Penitente? The surprised professor bit his lips and shook his head threateningly as he watched him depart. Then in a trembling voice he began his preachment on the same old theme, delivered, however, with more energy and more eloquence. It dealt with the growing arrogance, the innate ingratitude, the presumption, the lack of respect for superiors, the pride that the spirit of darkness infused in the young, the lack of manners, the absence of courtesy, and so on. From this he passed to coarse jest and sarcasm.... So he went on with his harangue until the bell rang and the class was over. The 234 students, after reciting their prayers, went out as ignorant as when they went in, but breathing more freely, as if a great weight had been lifted from them. Each youth had lost another hour of his life and with it a portion of his dignity and self-respect, and in exchange there was an increase of discontent, of aversion to study, of resentment in their heart. After all this ask for knowledge, dignity, gratitude! Just as the 234 spent their class hours, so the thousands of students that preceded them have spent theirs, and, if matters do not mend, so will those yet to come spend theirs, and be brutalized, while wounded dignity and youthful enthusiasm will be converted into hatred and sloth. [41] Rizal liked the Ateneo and the Ateneo liked him, students as well as fathers. His fellows seem to have had for him more of awe than affection as they contemplated his always growing list of victories. We may believe now that the distance that separated them from him was not so great as they thought, the wizardry of his prize-winning being, next to his hard work, the advantages of his definite aim. Most men that acquire this and follow it with any steadiness, whether it be for wealth, position, or reputation, seem to their contemporaries a kind of demon, but if they live, indent the chronicles of their times. The idea that seized upon Rizal and was always growing in his thoughts was that he ought to do something to help his people out of the prison-house of ignorance and tyranny in which they sat the bound captives of a preposterous social organization. This was enough to mark him apart from students that went to the Ateneo only because their parents told them to go. Good things for him were things that helped him to his purpose and bad things were things that got across his way. Long after he had left those sequestered halls, he put together notes on his recollections of his life at the Ateneo, that, curt as they are, light up his views of himself, his peculiar self-abnegation and his idea of his destiny. He says: