Alec concluded him drunk, although drink would not altogether account
for the strangeness of the address, and soon forgot him. The arch
echoed to his feet as he entered the dark quadrangle, across which a
glimmer in the opposite tower guided him to the stairs leading up to
the place of meeting. He found the large room lighted by a chandelier,
and one of the students seated as president in the professor's chair,
while the benches were occupied by about two hundred students, most of
the freshmen or _bejans_ in their red gowns.
Various preliminary matters were discussed with an energy of utterance,
and a fitness of speech, which would have put to shame the general
elocution of both the pulpit and the bar. At length, however, a certain
_semi_ (second-classman, or more popularly _sheep_) stood up to give
his opinion on some subject in dispute, and attempting to speak too
soon after his dinner, for he was one of the more fashionable order,
hemmed and stammered till the weariness of the assembly burst upon him
in a perfect torrent of hisses and other animal exclamations. Among the
loudest in this inarticulate protestation, were some of the red-gowned
bejans, and the speaker kindled with wrath at the presumption of the
yellow-beaks (becs jaunes: bejans), till, indignation bursting open the
barriers of utterance, he poured forth a torrent of sarcastic contempt
on the young clod-hoppers, who, having just come from herding their
fathers' cows, could express their feelings in no more suitable
language than that of the bovine animals which had been their principal
and fit associates.
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