“Tinamaan ng—!” [28] he muttered, biting his lips.

He hesitated about entering, for the mark was already down against him and was not to be erased.  One did not go to the class to learn but in order not to get this absence mark, for the class was reduced to reciting the lesson from memory, reading the book, and at the most answering a few abstract, profound, captious, enigmatic questions.  True, the usual preachment was never lacking—­the same as ever, about humility, submission, and respect to the clerics, and he, Placido, was humble, submissive, and respectful.  So he was about to turn away when he remembered that the examinations were approaching and his professor had not yet asked him a question nor appeared to notice him—­this would be a good opportunity to attract his attention and become known!  To be known was to gain a year, for if it cost nothing to suspend one who was not known, it required a hard heart not to be touched by the sight of a youth who by his daily presence was a reproach over a year of his life wasted.

So Placido went in, not on tiptoe as was his custom, but noisily on his heels, and only too well did he succeed in his intent!  The professor stared at him, knitted his brows, and shook his head, as though to say, “Ah, little impudence, you’ll pay for that!”

CHAPTER XIII

THE CLASS IN PHYSICS

The classroom was a spacious rectangular hall with large grated windows that admitted an abundance of light and air.  Along the two sides extended three wide tiers of stone covered with wood, filled with students arranged in alphabetical order.  At the end opposite the entrance, under a print of St. Thomas Aquinas, rose the professor’s chair on an elevated platform with a little stairway on each side.  With the exception of a beautiful blackboard in a narra frame, scarcely ever used, since there was still written on it the viva that had appeared on the opening day, no furniture, either useful or useless, was to be seen.  The walls, painted white and covered with glazed tiles to prevent scratches, were entirely bare, having neither a drawing nor a picture, nor even an outline of any physical apparatus.  The students had no need of any, no one missed the practical instruction in an extremely experimental science; for years and years it has been so taught and the country has not been upset, but continues just as ever.  Now and then some little instrument descended from heaven and was exhibited to the class from a distance, like the monstrance to the prostrate worshipers—­look, but touch not!  From time to time, when some complacent professor appeared, one day in the year was set aside for visiting the mysterious laboratory and gazing from without at the puzzling apparatus arranged in glass cases.  No one could complain, for on that day there were to be seen quantities of brass and glassware, tubes, disks, wheels, bells, and the like—­the exhibition did not get beyond that, and the country was not upset.