第81章

I COME TO GRIEF

At length the first examination--on differentials and integrals--

drew near, but I continued in a vague state which precluded me from forming any clear idea of what was awaiting me.Every evening, after consorting with Zuchin and the rest, the thought would occur to me that there was something in my convictions which I must change - something wrong and mistaken; yet every morning the daylight would find me again satisfied to be "comme il faut," and desirous of no change whatsoever.

Such was the frame of mind in which I attended for the first examination.I seated myself on the bench where the princes, counts, and barons always sat, and began talking to them in French, with the not unnatural result that I never gave another thought to the answers which I was shortly to return to questions in a subject of which I knew nothing.I gazed supinely at other students as they went up to be examined, and even allowed myself to chaff some of them.

"Well, Grap," I said to Ilinka (who, from our first entry into the University, had shaken off my influence, had ceased to smile when I spoke to him, and always remained ill-disposed towards me), "have you survived the ordeal?"

"Yes," retorted Ilinka."Let us see if YOU can do so."

I smiled contemptuously at the answer, notwithstanding that the doubt which he had expressed had given me a momentary shock.Once again, however, indifference overlaid that feeling, and I remained so entirely absent-minded and supine that, the very moment after I had been examined (a mere formality for me, as it turned out) I was making a dinner appointment with Baron Z.When called out with Ikonin, I smoothed the creases in my uniform, and walked up to the examiner's table with perfect sang froid.

True, a slight shiver of apprehension ran down my back when the young professor--the same one as had examined me for my matriculation--looked me straight in the face as I reached across to the envelope containing the tickets.Ikonin, though taking a ticket with the same plunge of his whole body as he had done at the previous examinations, did at least return some sort of an answer this time, though a poor one.I, on the contrary, did just as he had done on the two previous occasions, or even worse, since I took a second ticket, yet for a second time returned no answer.The professor looked me compassionately in the face, and said in a quiet, but determined, voice:

"You will not pass into the second course, Monsieur Irtenieff.

You had better not complete the examinations.The faculty must be weeded out.The same with you, Monsieur Ikonin."

Ikonin implored leave to finish the examinations, as a great favour, but the professor replied that he (Ikonin) was not likely to do in two days what he had not succeeded in doing in a year, and that he had not the smallest chance of passing.Ikonin renewed his humble, piteous appeals, but the professor was inexorable.

"You can go, gentlemen," he remarked in the same quiet, resolute voice.