appeared, but I know that, as a theologian and an expert, he would not be affected by it in his inner thoughts.
The professor of Syriac (and also, in part, of Scripture) was a man of a very different type. He was a very old professor, Mgr. Lamy, an eminent Syriac scholar, though a poor teacher, and one whose opinions on Biblical questions had been fossilised years ago. Like M. Van Hoonacker, he took the first chapter of Genesis as a subject of translation, and devoted more time to his commentaries on the text than to its Syriac construction. The contrast was instructive: every Monday morning we had the Hebrew professor’s advanced and semi-rationalistic commentary, resolving the famous chapter into myths and allegories: the following morning, from the same pulpit, Mgr. Lamy religiously anathematised all we had heard, and gave the literal interpretation of fifty years ago. He was kind and earnest, but his method of teaching was so unfortunate that, after one lecture per week for nine months, we knew little more than the Syriac alphabet. Towards the end he startled us one day by commanding us to prepare for the next lecture a translation of a dozen lines of Syriac without vowel points. The incident is illustrative of the average Flemish character. We were three in number in the course, and it was my turn to read at the next lecture. However, my companions, fearful of their own turn, endeavoured
