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xiii]

The music seemed to die away. Mein Herr was again speaking in his ordinary voice. "Now tell me one thing more," he said. "Am I right in thinking that in your Universities, though a man may reside some thirty or forty years, you examine him, once for all, at the end of the first three or four?"

"That is so, undoubtedly," I admitted.

"Practically, then, you examine a man at the beginning of his career!" the old man said to himself rather than to me. "And what guarantee have you that he retains the knowledge for which you have rewarded himbeforehand, as we should say?"

"None," I admitted, feeling a little puzzled at the drift of his remarks. "How do you secure that object?"