When he does not understand
the question, he waits for it to be written with the finger on
his side; and the careful way in which he works it out like some
backward and afflicted child is an infinitely pathetic sight. He
is much more zealous and conscientious than his fellow-pupils;
and we feel that, in the darkness wherein he dwells, this work
is, next to his meals, the only spark of light and interest in
his existence. He will certainly never rival Muhamed, for
instance, who is the arithmetical prodigy, the Inaudi, of horses;
but he is a valuable and living proof that the theory of
unconscious and imperceptible signs, the only one which the
German theorists have hitherto seriously considered, is now
clearly untenable.
I have not yet spoken of Zarif. He is not in the best of tempers;
and besides, in arithmetic, he is only a less learned and more
capricious Muhamed. He answers most of the questions at random,
stubbornly raising his foot and declining to lower it, so as
clearly to mark his disapproval; but he solves the last problem
correctly when he is promised a panful of carrots and no more
lessons for that morning. The groom enters to lead him away and
makes some movement or other at which the horse starts, rears and
shies.
"That's his bad conscience," says Krall, gravely.
And the expression assumes a singular meaning and importance in
this hybrid atmosphere, steeped in an indefinable something from
another world.
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