Moreover, the Professor knew how to converse, and could be brill-
iantly entertaining; there was nothing to find fault with in his
appearance; and if Janet was satisfied, Allen was. He knew his uncle
hated foreigners, but for his own part, he thought nothing so dull as
English respectability.
For once the Colonel declared that Bobus had more sense! Bobus had
come to a tolerably clear comprehension of the matter, and his first
impressions were confirmed by subsequent inquiries. Demetrius
Hermann was the son of some lawyer of King Otho's court who had
married a Greek lady. He had studied partly at Athens, partly at so
many other universities, that Bobus thought it rather suspicious;
while his uncle, who held that a respectable degree must be either of
Oxford or Cambridge, thought this fatal to his reputation. He had
studied medicine at one time, but had broached some theory which the
German faculty were too narrow to appreciate; "Which means," quoth
Bobus, "either that he could not get a licence to practise, or else
had it revoked."
Then he had taken to lecturing. The professorship was obscure; he
said it was Athenian, and Bobus had no immediate means of finding out
whether it were so or not, nor of analysing the alphabet of letters
that followed his name upon the advertisement of his lectures.
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