I COME TO GRIEF
At length the first examination--on differentials and integrals--
drew near, but I continued in a vague state which precluded me
from forming any clear idea of what was awaiting me. Every
evening, after consorting with Zuchin and the rest, the thought
would occur to me that there was something in my convictions
which I must change - something wrong and mistaken; yet every
morning the daylight would find me again satisfied to be "comme
il faut," and desirous of no change whatsoever.
Such was the frame of mind in which I attended for the first
examination. I seated myself on the bench where the princes,
counts, and barons always sat, and began talking to them in
French, with the not unnatural result that I never gave another
thought to the answers which I was sho
