Leo Tolstoy

“ Besides, it would be all the same for me if I did," he contrived to whisper just as the professor called us up to the blackboard. "I don`t feel up to anything to-day."
"Then everything is lost!" I thought to myself. Instead of the brilliant result which I had anticipated I should be for ever covered with shame--more so even than Ikonin! Suddenly, under the very eyes of the professor, Ikonin turned to me, snatched my ticket out of my hands, and handed me his own. ”

“ A moment`s glance would have sufficed to show any one that they were second-course students--persons to whom the University was as a second home. The mere look of their open gowns expressed at once disdain for the "mere candidate" and a knowledge that the "mere candidate`s" soul was filled with envy and admiration of them. ”

“ With some of these new friends I grew quite intimate, and even Ikonin plucked up sufficient courage to inform me, when we next met, that he would have to undergo re-examination in history--the reason for his failure this time being that the professor of that faculty had never forgiven him for last year`s examination, and had, indeed, "almost killed" him for it. Semenoff (who was destined for the same faculty as myself--the faculty of mathematics) avoided every one up to the very close of the examinations. ”