The Inquisition

Abstract

There was perfect silence in the study. Twenty-seven postulants were stooping over their high desks, writing and reading, their pens moving over the exercise books with the cumbersome stupidity of boyhood, their heads held between their hands as they repeated over and over again the conjugation of some Latin or Greek noun and tried to retain it in their racked memories. In the rear desk, three auxiliary prefects wearing black soutanes worked and conversed in whispers, disobeying the law of silence which they imposed on the younger postulants. For, even in religious orders, officials disobey their own laws.