Their tears burned me, my heart seemed bursting from my breast, and that day I left the school before closing-time to go home and weep alone.

Perhaps my sensitiveness may seem strange to you, but if you had been in my place you would understand it.

Old Don Anastasio said to me, 'So the parents want floggings?
Why not inflict them on themselves ?' As a result of it all I became sick." Ibarra was listening thoughtfully.
"Scarcely had I recovered when I returned to the school to find the number of my pupils reduced to a fifth.

The better ones had run away upon the return to the old system, and of those who remained--mostly those who came to school to escape work at home--not one showed any joy, not one congratulated me on my recovery.

It would have been the same to them whether I got well or not, or they might have preferred that I continue sick since my substitute, although he whipped them more, rarely went to the school.