" "That's true!" exclaimed the cornetist,
with sparkling eyes. "Let who will pore over their compendiums, we
choose to study in the vast picture-book which the dear God spreads
open before us! Yes, the gentleman may believe me, we make the right
sort of fellows, who know how to preach to the peasants from the
pulpit and to bang the cushion, so that the clodpoles down below are
ready to burst with humiliation and edification."
At hearing them talk thus, I became so pleased and interested that I
longed to be a student too. I could have listened forever, for I enjoy
the conversation of men of learning, from whom much is to be gained.
But we had no real, sensible conversation, for one of the students
was worried because the vacation was so nearly at an end. He put his
clarionet together, set up a sheet of music on his knees, and began to
practice a difficult passage from a mass which was to be played when
they returned to Prague. There he sat and fingered and played away,
sometimes so false that it fairly pierced your ears and you couldn't
hear your own voice.
Suddenly the cornetist exclaimed in his bass tones, "I have it!" and
down came his fist on the map before him. The other stopped practising
for a moment, and looked at him in surprise. "Hark ye," said the
cornetist, "there is a castle not far from Vienna, and in that
castle there is a porter, and that porter is my cousin! Dearest
fellow-students, that must be our goal; we must pay our respects to
my cousin, and he will arrange for our further journey.
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