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I said.
    He laughed. “I’m afraid you haven’t been at Hampden very long. The administration doesn’t like it much, but there’s nothing they can do. Occasionally they try to raise problems with distribution requirements but that’s never caused any real trouble. We study art, history, philosophy, all sorts of things. If I find you are deficient in a given area, I may decide to give you a tutorial, perhaps refer you to another teacher. As French is not my first language, I think it wise if you continue to study that with Mr. Laforgue. Next year I’ll start you on Latin. It’s a difficult language, but knowing Greek will make it easier for you. The most satisfying of languages, Latin. You will find it a delight to learn.”
    I listened, a bit affronted by his tone. To do what he asked was tantamount to my transferring entirely out of Hampden College into his own little academy of ancient Greek, student body five, six including me. “All my classes with you?” I said.
    “Not quite all of them,” he said seriously, and then laughed when he saw the look on my face. “I believe that having a great diversity of teachers is harmful and confusing for a young mind, in the same way I believe that it is better to know one book intimately that a hundred superficially,” he said. “I know the modern world tends not to agree with me, but after all, Plato had only one teacher, and Alexander.”
    Slowly I nodded, trying as I did so to think of a tactful way to withdraw, when my eyes met his and suddenly I thought: Why not? I was slightly giddy with the force of his personality but the extremism of the offer was appealing as well. His students—if they were any mark of his tutelage—were imposing enough, and different as they all were they shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had a strange cold breath of the ancient world: they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks— sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferehat . I envied them, and found them attractive; moreover this strange quality, far from being natural, gave every indication of having been intensely cultivated. (It was the same, I would come to find, with Julian: though he gave quite the opposite impression, of freshness and candor, it was not spontaneity but superior art which made it seem unstudied.) Studied or not, I wanted to be like them. It was heady to think that these qualities were acquired ones and that, perhaps, this was the way I might learn them.
    This was all a long way from Plano, and my father’s gas station. “And if I do take classes with you, will they all be in Greek?” I asked him.
    He laughed. “Of course not. We’ll be studying Dante, Virgil, all sorts of things. But I wouldn’t advise you to go out and buy a copy of Goodbye, Columbus ” (required, notoriously, in one of the freshman English classes) “if you will forgive me for being vulgar.”

    Georges Laforgue was disturbed when I told him what I planned to do. “This is a serious business,” he said. “You understand, don’t you, how limited will be your contact with the rest of the faculty and with the school?”
    “He’s a good teacher,” I said.
    “No teacher is that good. And if you should by chance have a disagreement with him, or be treated unjustly in any way, there will be nothing anyone on the faculty can do for you. Pardon me, but I do not see the point of paying a thirty-thousand-dollar tuition simply to study with one instructor.”
    I thought of referring that question to the Hampden College Endowment Fund, but I said nothing.
    He leaned back in his chair. “Forgive me, but I should think the elitist values of such a man would be repugnant to you,” he said. “Frankly, this is the first time I have ever heard of hisaccepting a pupil who is on such considerable financial aid. Being a democratic institution, Hampden College is not founded on such principles.”
    “Well, he can’t be all