“Very well,” said he, and delivered up his book. “Here it is. Yes, there is a crib in it. You can see for yourself; there it is. But I haven’t used it,” he suddenly shrieked, quite at random.
Dr. Mantelsack ignored this idiotic lie, which was rooted in despair. He drew out the crib, looked at it with an expression of extreme disgust, as if it were a piece of decaying offal, thrust it into his pocket, and threw the volume of Ovid contemptuously back on Petersen’s desk.
“Give me the class register,” he said in a hollow voice.
Adolf Todtenhaupt dutifully fetched it, and Petersen received a mark for dishonesty which effectually demolished his chances of being sent up at Easter. “You are the shame of the class,” said Dr. Mantelsack.
Petersen sat down. He was condemned. His neighbour avoided contact with him. Every one looked at him with a mixture of pity, aversion, and disgust. He had fallen, utterly and completely, because he had been found out. There was but one opinion as to Petersen, and that was that he was, in very truth, the shame of the class. They recognized and accepted his fall, as they had the rise of Timm and Buddenbrook and the unhappy Mumme’s mischance. And Petersen did too.
Thus most of this class of twenty-five young folk, being of sound and strong constitution, armed and prepared to wage the battle of life as it is, took things just as they found them, and did not at this moment feel any offence or uneasiness. Everything seemed to them to be quite in order. But one pair of eyes, little Johann’s, which stared gloomily at a point on Hans Hermann Kilian’s broad back, were filled, in their blue-shadowed depths, with abhorrence, fear, and revulsion. The lesson went on. Dr. Mantelsack called on somebody, anybody—he had lost all desire to test any one. And after Adolf Todtenhaupt, another pupil, who was but moderately prepared, and did not even know what “patula Jovis arbore” meant, had been called on, Buddenbrook had to say it. He said it in a low voice, without looking up, because Dr. Mantelsack asked him, and he received a nod of the head for the answer.
And now that the performance of the pupils was over, the lesson had lost all interest. Dr. Mantelsack had one of the best scholars read at his own sweet will, and listened just as little as the twenty-four others, who began to get ready for the next class. This one was finished, in effect. No one could be marked on it, nor his interest or industry judged. And the bell would soon ring. It did ring. It rang for Hanno, and he had received a nod of approbation. Thus it was.
“Well!” said Kai to Hanno, as they walked down the Gothic corridor with their classmates, to go to the chemistry class, “what do you say now about the brow of Caesar? You had wonderful luck!”
“I feel sick, Kai,” said little Johann, “I don’t like that kind of luck. It makes me sick.” Kai knew he would have felt the same in Hanno’s place.
The chemistry hall was a vaulted chamber like an amphitheatre with benches rising in tiers, a long table for the experiments, and two glass cases of phials. The air in the classroom had grown very hot and heavy again; but here it was saturated with an odour of sulphuretted hydrogen from a just-completed experiment, and smelled abominable. Kai flung up the window and then stole Adolf Todtenhaupt’s copy-book and began in great haste to copy down the lesson for the day. Hanno and several others did the same. This occupied the entire pause till the bell rang, and Dr. Marotzke came in.