"It will be all right, Monsieur Mouillard, never fear. No one has been refused a degree this morning."
"I am not afraid, Michu."
"When I say 'no one,' there was one refused—you never heard the like. Just imagine—a little to the right, please, Monsieur Mouillard—imagine, I say, a candidate who knew absolutely nothing. That is nothing extraordinary. But this fellow, after the examination was over, recommended himself to mercy. 'Have compassion on me, gentlemen,' he said, 'I only wish to be a magistrate!' Capital, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes."
"You don't seem to think so. You don't look like laughing this morning."
"No, Michu, every one has his bothers, you know."
"I said to myself as I looked at you just now, Monsieur Mouillard has some bother. Button up all the way, if you please, for a doctor's essay; if-you-please. It's a heartache, then?"
"Something of the kind."
He shrugged his shoulders and went before me, struggling with an asthmatic chuckle, until we came to the room set apart for the examination.
It was the smallest and darkest of all, and borrowed its light from a street which had little enough to spare, and spared as little as it could. On the left against the wall is a raised desk for the candidate. At the end, on a platform before a bookcase, sit the six examiners in red robes, capes with three bands of ermine, and gold-laced caps. Between the candidate's desk and the door is a little enclosure for spectators, of whom there were about thirty when I entered.