And the boys replied with furious noddings, some knocking their heads against their neighbours' heads; and even his wife, moved by the temple and the torch, stopped knitting her stocking and pushed back the rush-chair to envelop her husband in a glance of admiration.
He would question all the band of dirty urchins whose feet were bare and whose shirt-tails were in the air, with astonishing courtesy:
"Let's see, Señor de Lopis; rise."
And Señor de Lopis, a mucker of seven with short knee trousers held up by one suspender, tumbled off his bench and stood at attention before the master, gazing askance at the terrible cane.
"For some time, I've been watching you picking your nose and making little balls of it. An ugly habit, Señor de Lopis. Believe your master. I will let it pass this time because you are industrious and know your multiplication table; but knowledge is nothing when good-breeding is lacking; don't forget that, Señor de Lopis."
And the boy who made the little balls agreed with everything, overjoyed to get off without a caning. But another big boy who sat beside him on the bench and who must have been nourishing some old grudge, seeing him standing, gave him a treacherous pinch.
"Oh, oh, master!" cried the boy. "''Orse-face' pinched me!"
What was not Don Joaquín's indignation? What most excited his anger was the fondness the boys had for calling each other by their father's nicknames and even for inventing new ones.
"Who is ''Orse-Face'? Señor de Peris, you probably mean. What mode of address is that, great heavens! One would think you were in a drinking-house! If at least you had said Horse-Face! Wear yourself out teaching such idiots! Brutes!"
And raising his cane, he began to distribute resounding blows to each; to the one for the pinch and to the other for the "impropriety of language," as Don Joaquín expressed it, without stopping his whacks. And his blows were so blind that the other boys on the benches shrank together, each one hiding his head on his neighbour's shoulder; and one little fellow, the younger son of Batiste, frightened by the noise of the cane, had a movement of the bowels.