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 class, I can’t stand any more.”  Without further farewell, he stalked away.

The class was astounded; such an assumption 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 ingratitude, 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 passed to coarse 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 classes?  We wish that you may all know Spanish and that you pronounce 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 class 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, gratitude!

De nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur!