Indicating a doubt
as profound as if I had asked him whether chignons were worn in the
moon.
He had never thought of anything inside. There was no wine nor
pretty girls there. Why should one want to go in? We entered the cool
vestibule, and were ascending the stairs to the first court, when a
porter came out of his lodge and inquired our errand. We were wandering
barbarians with an eye to the picturesque, and would fain see the
university, if it were not unlawful. He replied, in a hushed and
scholastic tone of voice, and with a succession of confidential winks
that would have inspired confidence in the heart of a Talleyrand, that
if our lordships would give him our cards he had no doubt he could
obtain the required permission from the rector. He showed us into a dim,
claustral-looking anteroom, in which, as I was told by my friend, who
trifles in lost moments with the integral calculus, there were
seventy-two chairs and one microscopic table. The wall was decked with
portraits of the youth of the college, all from the same artist, who
probably went mad from the attempt to make fifty beardless faces look
unlike each other. We sat for some time mourning over his failure, until
the door opened, and not the porter, but the rector himself, a most
courteous and polished gentleman in the black robe and three-cornered
hat of his order, came in and graciously placed himself and the
university at our disposition.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 231 of 254
Words from 61429 to 61692
of 67759
