Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/245

 chained me ever since. In the country our circumstances had placed me among the well-to-do; now we had arrived in an inferno of noisy streets, and women in expensive dresses. My father, instead of being one of the influential people, had become merely one of a thousand civil servants.

The masters, who were apt to take for granted that a pupil from the provinces must be badly taught, worried me like devils. They treated me as though I were either an idiot, or else a dangerous ne’er-do-weel. Far from being a favourite myself, I saw others being favoured. I once ventured to give my opinion on this point to our Latin professor, a dried-up little man with a badger’s face, who enjoyed nothing more than giving bad marks.

From that day onward school-life became a torture-chamber, with the masters as executioners. I became neurotic; at one moment I would burst into tears, at the next go mad with fury. I fought sanguinary battles with my more favoured comrades.

The final result at the examination was that I failed in five subjects. This had the effect of changing the feelings of my parents towards me. My elder brother, a conscientious