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 the students, the episode of Basilio produced a bad impression and he was not questioned again during the year.

Why should he be, when he made no one laugh?
Quite discouraged and thinking of abandoning his studies, he passed to the fourth year of Latin.

Why study at all, why not sleep like the others and trust to luck?
One of the two professors was very popular, beloved by all, passing for a sage, a great poet, and a man of advanced ideas.