professors, could with difficulty make himself known in the rest of his
school-days. But Basilio kept on, for perseverance was his chief trait.

His fortune seemed to change somewhat when he entered the third
year. His professor happened to be a very jolly fellow, fond of
jokes and of making the students laugh, complacent enough in that
he almost always had his favorites recite the lessons--in fact,
he was satisfied with anything. At this time Basilio now wore shoes
and a clean and well-ironed camisa. As his professor noticed that
he laughed very little at the jokes and that his large eyes seemed
to be asking something like an eternal question, he took him for
a fool, and one day decided to make him conspicuous by calling
on him for the lesson. Basilio recited it from beginning to end,
without hesitating over a single letter, so the professor called him
a parrot and told a story to make the class laugh. Then to increase
the hilarity and justify the epithet he asked several questions,
at the same time winking to his favorites, as if to say to them,
"You'll see how we're going to amuse ourselves."

Basilio now understood Spanish and answered the questions with the
plain intention of making no one laugh. This disgusted everybody,
the expected absurdity did not materialize, no one could laugh, and
the good friar never pardoned him for having defrauded the hopes of
the class and disappointed his own prophecies. But who would expect
anything worth while to come from a head so badly combed and placed on
an Indian poorly shod, classified until recently among the arboreal
animals? As in other centers of learning, where the teachers are
honestly desirous that the students should learn, such discoveries
usually delight the instructors, so in a college managed by men
convinced that for the most part knowledge is an evil, at least for