To this precise and categorical question, a kind of ultimatum, Juanito did not know what to reply and his coat offered no suggestions. In vain he made signs to Placido, but Placido himself was in doubt. Juanito then took advantage of a moment in which the professor was staring at a student who was cautiously and secretly taking off the shoes that hurt his feet, to step heavily on Placido's toes and whisper, "Tell me, hurry up, tell me!"

"I distinguish--Get out! What an a.s.s you are!" yelled Placido unreservedly, as he stared with angry eyes and rubbed his hand over his patent-leather shoe.

The professor heard the cry, stared at the pair, and guessed what had happened.

"Listen, you meddler," he addressed Placido, "I wasn't questioning you, but since you think you can save others, let's see if you can save yourself, _salva te ipsum,_ and decide this question."

Juanito sat down in content, and as a mark of grat.i.tude stuck out his tongue at his prompter, who had arisen blushing with shame and muttering incoherent excuses.

For a moment Padre Millon regarded him as one gloating over a favorite dish. What a good thing it would be to humiliate and hold up to ridicule that dudish boy, always smartly dressed, with head erect and serene look! It would be a deed of charity, so the charitable professor applied himself to it with all his heart, slowly repeating the question.

"The book says that the metallic mirrors are made of bra.s.s and an alloy of different metals--is that true or is it not true?"

"So the book says, Padre."

"_Liber dixit, ergo ita est_. Don't pretend that you know more than the book does. It then adds that the gla.s.s mirrors are made of a sheet of gla.s.s whose two surfaces are well polished, one of them having applied to it an amalgam of tin, _nota bene_, an amalgam of tin! Is that true?"

"If the book says so, Padre."

"Is tin a metal?"

"It seems so, Padre. The book says so."

"It is, it is, and the word amalgam means that it is compounded with mercury, which is also a metal. _Ergo_, a gla.s.s mirror is a metallic mirror; _ergo_, the terms of the distinction are confused; _ergo_, the cla.s.sification is imperfect--how do you explain that, meddler?"

He emphasized the _ergos_ and the familiar "you's" with indescribable relish, at the same time winking, as though to say, "You're done for."

"It means that, it means that--" stammered Placido.

"It means that you haven't learned the lesson, you petty meddler, you don't understand it yourself, and yet you prompt your neighbor!"

The cla.s.s took no offense, but on the contrary many thought the epithet funny and laughed. Placido bit his lips.

"What's your name?" the professor asked him.

"Placido," was the curt reply.

"Aha! Placido Penitente, although you look more like Placido the Prompter--or the Prompted. But, _Penitent_, I'm going to impose some _penance_ on you for your promptings."

Pleased with his play on words, he ordered the youth to recite the lesson, and the latter, in the state of mind to which he was reduced, made more than three mistakes. Shaking his head up and down, the professor slowly opened the register and slowly scanned it while he called off the names in a low voice.

"Palencia--Palomo--Panganiban--Pedraza--Pelado--Pelaez--Penitents, aha! Placido Penitente, fifteen unexcused absences--"

Placido started up. "Fifteen absences, Padre?"

"Fifteen unexcused absences," continued the professor, "so that you only lack one to be dropped from the roll."

"Fifteen absences, fifteen absences," repeated Placido in amazement. "I've never been absent more than four times, and with today, perhaps five."

"Jesso, jesso, monseer," [31] replied the professor, examining the youth over his gold eye-gla.s.ses. "You confess that you have missed five times, and G.o.d knows if you may have missed oftener. _Atqui_, as I rarely call the roll, every time I catch any one I put five marks against him; _ergo_, how many are five times five? Have you forgotten the multiplication table? Five times five?"

"Twenty-five."

"Correct, correct! Thus you've still got away with ten, because I have caught you only three times. Huh, if I had caught you every time--Now, how many are three times five?"

"Fifteen."

"Fifteen, right you are!" concluded the professor, closing the register. "If you miss once more--out of doors with you, get out! Ah, now a mark for the failure in the daily lesson."

He again opened the register, sought out the name, and entered the mark. "Come, only one mark," he said, "since you hadn't any before."

"But, Padre," exclaimed Placido, restraining himself, "if your Reverence puts a mark against me for failing in the lesson, your Reverence owes it to me to erase the one for absence that you have put against me for today."

His Reverence made no answer. First he slowly entered the mark, then contemplated it with his head on one side,--the mark must be artistic,--closed the register, and asked with great sarcasm, "_Aba_, and why so, sir?"

"Because I can't conceive, Padre, how one can be absent from the cla.s.s and at the same time recite the lesson in it. Your Reverence is saying that to be is not to be."

"_Naku_, a metaphysician, but a rather premature one! So you can't conceive of it, eh? _Sed patet experientia_ and _contra experientiam negantem, fusilibus est arguendum_, do you understand? And can't you conceive, with your philosophical head, that one can be absent from the cla.s.s and not know the lesson at the same time? Is it a fact that absence necessarily implies knowledge? What do you say to that, philosophaster?"

This last epithet was the drop of water that made the full cup overflow. Placido enjoyed among his friends the reputation of being a philosopher, so he lost his patience, threw down his book, arose, and faced the professor.

"Enough, Padre, enough! Your Reverence can put all the marks against me that you wish, but you haven't the right to insult me. Your Reverence may stay with the cla.s.s, I can't stand any more." Without further farewell, he stalked away.

The cla.s.s was astounded; such an a.s.sumption 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 ingrat.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sed to coa.r.s.e jests and sarcasm over the presumption which some good-for-nothing "prompters" had of teaching their teachers by establishing an academy for instruction in Castilian.

"Aha, aha!" he moralized, "those who the day before yesterday scarcely knew how to say, 'Yes, Padre,' 'No, Padre,' now want to know more than those who have grown gray teaching them. He who wishes to learn, will learn, academies or no academies! Undoubtedly that fellow who has just gone out is one of those in the project. Castilian is in good hands with such guardians! When are you going to get the time to attend the academy if you have scarcely enough to fulfill your duties in the regular cla.s.ses? We wish that you may all know Spanish and that you p.r.o.nounce it well, so that you won't split our ear-drums with your twist of expression and your 'p's'; [32] but first business and then pleasure: finish your studies first, and afterwards learn Castilian, and all become clerks, if you so wish."

So he went on with his harangue until the bell rang and the cla.s.s was over. The two hundred and thirty-four 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 hearts. After all this ask for knowledge, dignity, grat.i.tude!

_De n.o.bis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur_!

Just as the two hundred and thirty-four spent their cla.s.s hours, so the thousands of students who 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, like the waves that become polluted along one part of the sh.o.r.e and roll on one after another, each in succession depositing a larger sediment of filth. But yet He who from eternity watches the consequences of a deed develop like a thread through the loom of the centuries, He who weighs the value of a second and has ordained for His creatures as an elemental law progress and development, He, if He is just, will demand a strict accounting from those who must render it, of the millions of intelligences darkened and blinded, of human dignity trampled upon in millions of His creatures, and of the incalculable time lost and effort wasted! And if the teachings of the Gospel are based on truth, so also will these have to answer--the millions and millions who do not know how to preserve the light of their intelligences and their dignity of mind, as the master demanded an accounting from the cowardly servant for the talent that he let be taken from him.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE HOUSE OF THE STUDENTS

The house where Makaraig lived was worth visiting. Large and s.p.a.cious, with two entresols provided with elegant gratings, it seemed to be a school during the first hours of the morning and pandemonium from ten o'clock on. During the boarders' recreation hours, from the lower hallway of the s.p.a.cious entrance up to the main floor, there was a bubbling of laughter, shouts, and movement. Boys in scanty clothing played _sipa_ or practised gymnastic exercises on improvised trapezes, while on the staircase a fight was in progress between eight or nine armed with canes, sticks, and ropes, but neither attackers nor attacked did any great damage, their blows generally falling sidewise upon the shoulders of the Chinese pedler who was there selling his outlandish mixtures and indigestible pastries. Crowds of boys surrounded him, pulled at his already disordered queue, s.n.a.t.c.hed pies from him, haggled over the prices, and committed a thousand deviltries. The Chinese yelled, swore, forswore, in all the languages he could jabber, not omitting his own; he whimpered, laughed, pleaded, put on a smiling face when an ugly one would not serve, or the reverse.

He cursed them as devils, savages, _no kilistanos_ [33] but that mattered nothing. A whack would bring his face around smiling, and if the blow fell only upon his shoulders he would calmly continue his business transactions, contenting himself with crying out to them that he was not in the game, but if it struck the flat basket on which were placed his wares, then he would swear never to come again, as he poured out upon 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.