Benedict thought that she was too young now to be left instructing good-hearted young men, but he only said, "Yes, I daresay I was stupid. One should cut one's teeth on Latin conjugations, and I was already fourteen with a full Rabbinical diploma before I was even aware there was such a person as Cicero in history."
"And now thou writest Ciceronian Latin. Shake not thy head—'tis a compliment to myself, not to thee. What if thou art sometimes more exact than elegant—fancy what a coil of Hebrew cobwebs I had to sweep out of that brain-pan of thine ere I transformed thee from Baruch to Benedict."
"Nay, some of the webs were of silk. I see now how much Benedict owes to Baruch. The Rabbinical gymnastic is no ill-training, though unmethodic. Maimonides de-anthropomorphises God, the Cabalah grapples, if confusedly, with the problem of philosophy."
"Thou didst not always speak so leniently of thy ancient learning. Methinks thou hast forgotten thy sufferings and the catalogue of curses. I would shut thee up a week with Moses Zacut, and punish you both with each other's society. The room should be four cubits square, so that he should be forced to disobey the Ban and be within four cubits of thee."
"Thou forgettest to reckon with the mathematics," laughed Spinoza. "We should fly to opposite ends of the diagonal and achieve five and two third cubits of separation."
"Ah, fuzzle me not with thy square roots. I was never a calculator."
"But Moses Zacut was not so unbearable. I mind me he also learnt Latin under thee."
"Ay, and now spits out to see me. Fasted forty days for his sin in learning the devil's language."
"What converted him?"
"That Turkish mountebank, I imagine."