XIX The Overseer of Studies
Bamb. Ah! the overseer (observator) is coming. Get ready your books, open them, and begin to turn over the pages and read them.
There has not been for many weeks a more zealous overseer, one who would rejoice so much to pass on charges against any one to the master.
Bamb. Would that at least he would accuse us of our real faults, but for the most part he brings false witness against us.
Nugo. Let that saying of Horace be a wall of brass to us:
Nihil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.
But be quiet! I will immediately put him to rout.
Observ. What do you say, Vacia?
Nugo. What do you say, Vatrax?
Observ. What do you say, Batrachomyomachia? But, joking aside, what are you doing here?
Nugo. What are we doing? What are good scholars and students always doing? We are reading, learning, disputing. Tell us, please, most charming creature,38 what is the meaning of that passage in Vergil’s Eclogues:
... transversa tuentibus hirquis.
Observ. You do well; proceed with your studies as it behoves young men of good abilities. I have now other business in hand. Farewell.
Nugo. We have had sufficient trifling. Let us get back to school. But first let us read over again what the teacher explained, so that we learn something, and give him pleasure, and so that he may approve of us—which must be in our prayers as much as it is in those of the father of each of us.