"We shall see," said John, "whether knowledge does not tell in any ease."
"If you are so sure, then try, but consider first what I say. You must first go to the assistant-professor and get a 'tip'."
"What do you mean?"
"For a krona he will give you an hour's polishing, and ask you all the important questions which the professor has put during the past year. Just now he is in the habit of asking whether matches can be made out of his carcase and ammonia from your old boots. But that you will learn from the assistant. Secondly, you must not go to be examined in a frock coat and white tie; least of all, dressed as well as you are now. Therefore you must borrow my riding-coat, which is green in the shoulders and red in the seams, and my top-boots, for he does not like elastic boots."
John followed his friend's instructions and went first to the assistant-professor who gave him the questions which had been last asked. In return John promised that under all circumstances he would return and tell him the questions which he himself had been asked, as a means of enlarging his catechism.
The next day John went to his friend to array himself. His trousers were drawn up so that the tops of the boots should be seen and his loose collar turned on one side, so that the skin should show between the tie and the collar. Thus equipped, he went up for his first trial.
The professor of chemistry had formerly been a fortification officer, and had received in his time a not very cordial welcome from the learned staff in Upsala. He was a soldier, not academically cultivated, and thus a kind of "Philistine." This had galled him and made him bilious. In order to efface the effect of his laymen-like exterior, he affected the airs of an over-read and blunt professor. He went about ill-dressed and behaved eccentrically. Though many hundreds besides himself had been pupils of Berzelius, he was fond of mentioning the fact; it was his trump card. Berzelius, among other things, went about in shabby trousers, therefore a hole in one's clothes was the sign of a learned chemist, and so on. Hence all these peculiarities.
John presented himself, was regarded with suspicion and bidden to come again in a week. He replied that he had come from Stockholm and was too poor to support himself for a week in the town. He managed to get permission to present himself the next day. "It would be soon over," said the old man.
The next day he sat on a seat opposite the professor. It was a sunny afternoon in May, and the old man seemed to have digested his dinner badly. He looked grim as he threw out his first question from his rocking-chair. The answers were correct at the beginning. Then the questions became more tortuous like snakes.
"If I have an estate, where I suspect the presence of saltpetre, how shall I begin to construct a saltpetre factory?"