r had been full of rumours concerning the tribulations of candidates
who had gone up before me: rumours of how one young fellow had been
accorded a nought, another one a single mark only, a third one greeted
with abuse and threatened with expulsion, and so forth. Only Semenoff
and the first gymnasium student had, as usual, gone up quietly, and
returned to their seats with five marks credited to their names. Already
I felt a prescience of disaster when Ikonin and myself found ourselves
summoned to the little table at which the terrible professor sat in
solitary grandeur.

The terrible professor turned out to be a little thin, bilious-looking
man with hair long and greasy and a face expressive of extraordinary
sullenness. Handing Ikonin a copy of Cicero's Orations, he bid him
translate. To my great astonishment Ikonin not only read off some of
the Latin, but even managed to construe a few lines to the professor's
prompting. At the same time, conscious of my superiority over such a
feeble companion, I could not help smiling a little, and even looking
rather contemptuous, when it came to a question of analysis, and Ikonin,
as on previous occasions, plunged into a silence which promised never
to end. I had hoped to please the professor by that knowing, slightly
sarcastic smile of mine, but, as a matter of fact, I contrived to do
quite the contrary.

"Evidently you know better than he, since you are laughing," he said to
me in bad Russian. "Well, we shall see. Tell me the answer, then."

Later I learnt that the professor was Ikonin's guardian, and that Ikonin
actually lived with him. I lost no time in answering the question in
syntax which had been put to Ikonin, but the professor only pulled a
long face and turned away from me.

"Well, your turn will come presently, and then we shall see how much you
know," he remarked, without looking at me, but proceeding to explain to
Ikonin the point on which he had questioned him.

"That will do," he added, and I saw him put down four marks to Ikonin in
his register. "Come!" I thought to myself. "He cannot be so strict after
all."

When Ikonin had taken his departure the professor spent fully five
minutes--five minutes which seemed to me five hours--in setting his
books and tickets in order, in blowing his nose, in adjusting and
sprawling about on his chair, in gazing down the hall, and in looking
here, there, and everywhere--in doing everything, in fact, except once
letting his