His mother and the old man chatted a while, and at last the latter exclaimed:
“Very well, my boy. You shall go to England. Get his baggage ready,” he added, turning to the mother, “and let him go as soon as possible.”
Quentin departed, making the journey sometimes in the company of others, sometimes alone, and entered Eton School, near Windsor. In a short time he had forgotten his entire former life.
In the English school the professor was not the enemy of the scholar, but rather one of his schoolmates. Quentin met boys as daring as he, and stronger than he, and he had to look alive. That school was something like a primitive forest where the strong devoured the weak, and conquered and abused them.
The brutality of the English education acted like a tonic upon Quentin, and made him athletic and good-humoured. The thing of paramount importance that he learned there, was that one must be strong and alert and calm in life, and ready to conquer always.
In the same way that he accepted this concept on account of the way it flattered him, he rejected the moral and sentimental concepts of his fellow-pupils and masters. Those young men of bulldog determination, valiant, strengthened by football and rowing, and nourished by underdone meat, were full of ridiculous conventions and respect for social class, for the hierarchy, and for authority.
In spite of the fact that he passed for an aristocrat and a son of a marquis in order to enjoy a certain prestige in the school, Quentin manifested a profound contempt for the principles his schoolmates held in such respect. He considered that authority, wigs, and ceremonies were grotesque, and consequently was looked upon as the worst kind of a poser.
He used to maintain, much to the stupefaction of his comrades, that he felt no enthusiasm for religion, nor for his native land; that not only would he not sacrifice himself for them, but he would not even give a farthing to save them. Moreover, he asserted that if he should ever become rich, he would prefer to owe his money to chance, rather than to constant effort on his part; and that to work, as the English did, that their wives might amuse themselves and live well, was absurd—for all their blond hair, their great beauty, and their flute-like voices.
A man with his ideas, and one, moreover, who followed women—even servant girls—in the street, and made complimentary remarks to them, could not be a gentleman, and for this reason, Quentin had no intimate friends. He was respected for his good fists, but enjoyed absolutely no esteem....
During his last years at school, his only real friend was an Italian teacher of music named Caravaglia. This man communicated to Quentin his enthusiasm for Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, and Verdi. Caravaglia used to sit at the piano and sing. Quentin listened to him and was much softened by the music. The Alma innamoratta from Lucia, and La cavattina from Hernani, made him weep; but his greatest favourites, the songs that went straight to his heart, were the manly arias from the Italian operas like that in Rigoletto, that goes: