his dinner, for he was one of the more fashionable order,
hemmed and stammered till the weariness of the assembly burst upon him
in a perfect torrent of hisses and other animal exclamations. Among the
loudest in this inarticulate protestation, were some of the red-gowned
bejans, and the speaker kindled with wrath at the presumption of the
yellow-beaks (becs jaunes: bejans), till, indignation bursting open the
barriers of utterance, he poured forth a torrent of sarcastic contempt
on the young clod-hoppers, who, having just come from herding their
fathers' cows, could express their feelings in no more suitable
language than that of the bovine animals which had been their principal
and fit associates. As he sat down, his eyes rested with withering
scorn upon Alec Forbes, who instantly started to his feet amidst a
confusion of plaudits and hisses, but, finding it absolutely impossible
to speak so as to be heard, contented himself with uttering a sonorous
_ba-a-a-a_, and instant dropped into his seat, all the other outcries
dissolving in shouts of laughter. In a moment he received a candle full
in the face; its companions went flying in all directions, and the room
was in utter darkness. A scramble for the door followed; and amidst
struggling, shouting, and swearing, the whole company rolled down the
stair into the quadrangle, most of them without their caps, and some
with their new gowns torn from bottom to top. The night was hideous
with the uproar. In the descent, Alec received a blow on the head which
half stunned him; but he did not imagine that its severity was other
than an accident of the crush. He made the best of his way home, and
went to bed.

After this he was popular; and after this, as often as Patrick
Beauchamp and he passed each other in walking up and down the arcade,
Beauchamp's high curved upper lip would curve yet higher, and Alec
would feel with annoyance that he could not sustain the glance of his
gray eyes.

Beauchamp was no great favourite even in his own set; for there is one
kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the fewer
proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.

CHAPTER XXXV.

One morning, about two months from the beginning of the session, after
the students had been reading for some time in the Greek class, the
professor was seen, not unexpectedly to part of the assembly, to look
up at the ceiling with sudden discomposure. There had been a heavy fall
of snow i