Over there, the older boys, students in professional courses, who affected silk socks and embroidered slippers, amused themselves in teasing the smaller boys by pulling their ears, already red from repeated fillips, while two or three held down a little fellow who yelled and cried, defending himself with his feet against being reduced to the condition in which he was born, kicking and howling.

In one room, around a small table, four were playing _revesino_ with laughter and jokes, to the great annoyance of another who pretended to be studying his lesson but who was in reality waiting his turn to play.
Still another came in with exaggerated wonder, scandalized as he approached the table.

"How wicked you are! So early in the morning and already gambling! Let's see, let's see! You fool, take it with the three of spades!" Closing his book, he too joined in the game.
Cries and blows were heard.

Two boys were fighting in the adjoining room--a lame student who was very sensitive about his infirmity and an unhappy newcomer from the provinces who was just commencing his studies.

He was working over a treatise on philosophy and reading innocently in a loud voice, with a wrong accent, the Cartesian principle: "_Cogito, ergo sum!_" The little lame boy (_el cojito_) took this as an insult and the others intervened to restore peace, but in reality only to sow discord and come to blows themselves.
In the dining-room a young man with a can of sardines, a bottle of wine, and the provisions that he had just brought from his town, was making heroic efforts to the end that his friends might participate in his lunch, while they were offering in their turn heroic resistance to his invitation.