"And you are always trying to be better than everybody else," said Fredegunda, appearing in the door.
"For heaven's sake, children, I pray you, keep quiet," cries Doctor Clemens, with imploring voice, raising his hands as if in prayer; "I hear somebody in the passage."
The door was really opened at that moment by a maid, and in walk Professor Snellius, Mrs. Professor Snellius, and Miss Ida Snellius.
The broken peace of the Clemens family is immediately restored. They receive the new-comers as heartily as people who have worked their way to genuine humanity are apt to welcome their friends.
Professor Snellius, teacher of the first form and con-rector, a man of some forty years, aspired, like Rector Clemens, and perhaps even more energetically, to the ideal, and was perhaps even more favored in these efforts by his outward appearance. While the beauty of Rector Clemens had something vague about it, the character imprinted on the clear features of Professor Snellius was unmistakable; even the most malicious critic could not have denied that he bore a more than passing resemblance to his favorite poet, Schiller. His admirers found in him the same boldly-curved nose, with the electric spasms around the nostrils, the same earnestness, the same majesty, the same tall form, which, however, was not dressed in ideal costume, but yielded so far to the demands of the time as to submit to a plain black suit, in which the painful neatness is interrupted only by the spotless white of a somewhat tight cravat. Professor Snellius is a pedagogue in the fullest sense of the word. His erudition is literally overwhelming. He teaches all the modern languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, and is not quite unacquainted even with Chinese, which he reads in his leisure hours. He is enthusiastic about the young and his vocation as a teacher of the young. He has proclaimed his views on this most important task, and his propositions how to solve its problems in the best manner, in his voluminous work: "History of Education among the West Asiatic Nations prior to the times of Rhamses the Great." The motto of this work, and at the same time the professor's own motto, is: "Through struggle to victory!" Professor Snellius looks soberly upon life, and stammers a little whenever he becomes excited, as very frequently happens to him, about the want of ideal enthusiasm in his pupils, or about any other of his favorite subjects.
Mrs. Professor Snellius is a little lady who would be insignificant if she were not the wife of such a very great scholar. Miss Ida Snellius is an exceedingly tall and exceedingly awkward girl of sixteen, who looks marvellously like her father, and has the reputation of having inherited largely the erudition of her father. She likes to converse with highly-educated gentlemen--with others she does not speak at all--of comparative philology, and of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and is reported to have read through the twelve volumes of her father's famous work. This report, however, is so monstrous, that its truth may well be doubted.
The long-drawn salutations between the families Clemens and Snellius had not yet come to an end, when the door opened once more to admit Dr. Kubel with wife and daughter. Kubel teaches the third form, and is a round, jovial little man, with a smoothly-shaven face, and white, well-kept hands--so round and so jovial that our days no longer produce the like, and that they were found only in the peaceful, stagnant waters of the period from the Congress of Vienna to the year 1848, in out-of-the-way colleges and other quiet districts of quiet Germany. His voice is loud and squeaking, and reminds you, as the figure of the man himself does, of the harmless dwellers in morasses. His erudition is not remarkable. Scoffers maintain that his only merit as a philologist consists in his having a very pretty daughter. Mary Kubel is indeed a very pretty, brown-eyed girl, ever cheerful and ready to laugh, who is unspeakably despised by the Misses Snellius and Clemens; by the former because she has once confounded Alexander and William von Humboldt; and by the latter because she has no idea of reading dramatic compositions. To-day she especially roused the indignation of Thusnelda and Fredegunda, because she arrived at the same time with the two doctors, Winimer and Broadfoot, and therefore has the appearance of having them in her train. Now Thusnelda and Fredegunda are accustomed to claim the attentions of these two gentlemen as their own exclusive right, and that not without reason, for Mr. Winimer has already worn a lock of Thusnelda's hair near his heart for about six months, and exhibits it in sentimental moments to his intimate friends, threatening them with fearful disgrace if they should ever, ever betray him; and Mr. Broadfoot has lost at least a dozen philippines, and, some say, his heart with them, to Fredegunda, during the six months since he received his appointment at the college. Doctor Winimer is a slender young man of medium size, whose tact in the intercourse with the fair sex is a proverb among his colleagues, and who is always in more or less nervous excitement--thanks, no doubt, to the many delicate relations in which he stands, and of which he speaks in mysterious terms. Doctor Broadfoot is a gentleman whom a stranger might take for a butcher, and who is the continual butt of his friends, on account of his enormous hands and feet, and his ordinary manners.
"Now, our club is nearly assembled," says Rector Clemens, rubbing his hands softly and raising his voice moderately. "Our dear guests alone have not come yet."
"Our guests, dear collega?" says Professor Snellius. "I thought the question was in the singularis of hospes?"
"Minime!" smiled the rector. "I have prepared a dual, yes, I may say a plural of surprises for you to-night, gentlemen and ladies. There will be two new guests here, besides our new colleague, of whom I expect great things for our social intercourse. Can you guess who they are?"