ry, if not actually insane, the
Jesuit Secchi, to whom he imputed the making of triangulations on
the host as a result of his astronomical mania, for which reason it
was said that he had been forbidden to celebrate mass. Many persons
also noticed in him some aversion to the sciences that he taught,
but these vagaries were trifles, scholarly and religious prejudices
that were easily explained, not only by the fact that the physical
sciences were eminently practical, of pure observation and deduction,
while his forte was philosophy, purely speculative, of abstraction
and induction, but also because, like any good Dominican, jealous
of the fame of his order, he could hardly feel any affection for a
science in which none of his brethren had excelled--he was the first
who did not accept the chemistry of St. Thomas Aquinas--and in which
so much renown had been acquired by hostile, or rather, let us say,
rival orders.

This was the professor who that morning called the roll and directed
many of the students to recite the lesson from memory, word for
word. The phonographs got into operation, some well, some ill, some
stammering, and received their grades. He who recited without an error
earned a good mark and he who made more than three mistakes a bad mark.

A fat boy with a sleepy face and hair as stiff and hard as the bristles
of a brush yawned until he seemed to be about to dislocate his jaws,
and stretched himself with his arms extended as though he were in
his bed. The professor saw this and wished to startle him.

"Eh, there, sleepy-head! What's this? Lazy, too, so it's sure you
[30] don't know the lesson, ha?"

Padre Millon not only used the depreciative _tu_ with the students,
like a good friar, but he also addressed them in the slang of the
markets, a practise that he had acquired from the professor of
canonical law: whether that reverend gentleman wished to humble the
students or the sacred decrees of the councils is a question not yet
settled, in spite of the great attention that has been given to it.

This question, instead of offending the class, amused them, and many
laughed--it was a daily occurrence. But the sleeper did not laugh;
he arose with a bound, rubbed his eyes, and, as though a steam-engine
were turning the phonograph, began to recite.

"The name of mirror is applied to all polished surfaces intended to
produce by the reflection of light the images of the objects placed
before said surfaces. From