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‘Less than your usual grace, but the fact. Regulus was in earnest. He was also engaged at the same time in cutting his own throat with every word he uttered. He knew Carthage which (your examiners won’t ask you this so you needn’t take notes) was a sort of God-forsaken nigger Manchester. Regulus was not thinking about his own life. He was telling Rome the truth. He was playing for his side. Those lines from the eighteenth to the fortieth ought to be written in blood. Yet there are things in human garments which will tell you that Horace was a flaneur–a man about town. Avoid such beings. Horace knew a very great deal. He knew! Erit ille fortis–“will he be brave who once to faithless foes has knelt?” And again (stop pawing with your hooves, Thornton!) hic unde vitam sumeret inscius. That means roughly–but I perceive I am ahead of my translators. Begin at hic unde, Vernon, and let us see if you have the spirit of Regulus.’

Now no one expected fireworks from gentle Paddy Vernon, sub-prefect of Hartopp’s House, but, as must often be the case with growing boys, his mind was in abeyance for the time being, and he said, all in a rush, on behalf of Regulus: ‘O magna Carthago probrosis altior Italiae ruinis, O Carthage, thou wilt stand forth higher than the ruins of Italy.’

Even Beetle, most lenient of critics, was interested at this point, though he did not join the half-groan of reprobation from the wiser heads of the Form.

‘Please don’t mind me,’ said King, and Vernon very kindly did not. He ploughed on thus: ‘He (Regulus) is related to have removed from himself the kiss of the shameful wife and of his small children as less by the head, and, being stern, to have placed his virile visage on the ground.’

Since King loved ‘virile’ about as much as he did ‘spouse’ or ‘forsooth’ the Form looked up hopefully. But Jove thundered not.

‘Until,’ Vernon continued, ‘he should have confirmed the sliding fathers as being the author of counsel never given under an alias.’

He stopped, conscious of stillness round him like the dread calm of the typhoon’s centre. King’s opening voice was sweeter than honey.

‘I am painfully aware by bitter experience that I cannot give you any idea of the passion, the power, the–the essential guts of the lines which you have so foully outraged in our presence. But–‘ the note changed, ‘so far as in me lies, I will strive to bring home to you, Vernon, the fact that there exist in Latin a few pitiful rules of grammar, of syntax, nay, even of declension, which were not created for your incult sport–your Boeotian diversion. You will, therefore, Vernon, write out and bring to me to-morrow a word-for-word English-Latin translation of the Ode, together with a full list of all adjectives–an adjective is not a verb, Vernon, as the Lower Third will tell you–all adjectives, their number, case, and gender. Even now I haven’t begun to deal with you faithfully.’

‘I–I’m very sorry, sir,’ Vernon stammered.

‘You mistake the symptoms, Vernon. You are possibly discomfited by the imposition, but sorrow postulates some sort of mind, intellect, nous. Your rendering of probrosis alone stamps you as lower than the beasts of the field. Will some one take the taste out of our mouths? And–talking of tastes–‘ He coughed. There was a distinct flavour of chlorine gas in the air. Up went an eyebrow, though King knew perfectly well what it meant.

‘Mr. Hartopp’s st–science class next door,’ said Malpass.

‘Oh yes. I had forgotten. Our newly established Modern Side, of course. Perowne, open the windows; and Winton, go on once more from interque maerentes.’

‘And hastened away,’ said Winton, ‘surrounded by his mourning friends, into–into illustrious banishment. But I got that out of Conington, sir,’ he added in one conscientious breath.

‘I am aware. The master generally knows his ass’s crib, though I acquit you of any intention that way. Can you suggest anything for egregius exul? Only “egregious exile”? I fear “egregious” is a good word ruined. No! You can’t in this case improve on Conington. Now then for atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor pararet. The whole force of it lies in the atqui.’