on them all the imprecations and anathemas
imaginable. Then the boys would redouble their efforts to make him
rage the more, and when at last his vocabulary was exhausted and they
were satiated with his fearful mixtures, they paid him religiously,
and sent him away happy, winking, chuckling to himself, and receiving
as caresses the light blows from their canes that the students gave
him as tokens of farewell.

Concerts on the piano and violin, the guitar, and the accordion,
alternated with the continual clashing of blades from the fencing
lessons. Around a long, wide table the students of the Ateneo prepared
their compositions or solved their problems by the side of others
writing to their sweethearts on pink perforated note-paper covered
with drawings. Here one was composing a melodrama at the side of
another practising on the flute, from which he drew wheezy notes. Over
there, the older boys, students in professional courses, who affected
silk socks and embroidered slippers, amused themselves in teasing
the smaller boys by pulling their ears, already red from repeated
fillips, while two or three held down a little fellow who yelled and
cried, defending himself with his feet against being reduced to the
condition in which he was born, kicking and howling. In one room,
around a small table, four were playing _revesino_ with laughter and
jokes, to the great annoyance of another who pretended to be studying
his lesson but who was in reality waiting his turn to play.

Still another came in with exaggerated wonder, scandalized as he
approached the table. "How wicked you are! So early in the morning
and already gambling! Let's see, let's see! You fool, take it with
the three of spades!" Closing his book, he too joined in the game.

Cries and blows were heard. Two boys were fighting in the adjoining
room--a lame student who was very sensitive about his infirmity and
an unhappy newcomer from the provinces who was just commencing his
studies. He was working over a treatise on philosophy and reading
innocently in a loud voice, with a wrong accent, the Cartesian
principle: "_Cogito, ergo sum!_"

The little lame boy (_el cojito_) took this as an insult and the others
intervened to restore peace, but in reality only to sow discord and
come to blows themselves.

In the dining-room a young man with a can of sardines, a bottle of
wine, and the provisions that he had just brought from his town, was
making heroic efforts to the en