Riot Most Uncouth Read Online Free PDF

manhood and have finally become equipped to settle things, a young woman’s corpse has been butchered like a sow’s only a few hundred yards from my own residence and drained of blood. I will not assume this is coincidental, and therefore, investigating the murder must be my first concern. My debts and academic problems are insignificant by comparison.”
    The bear just watched me, chewing and looking slightly perturbed.
    â€œWell, if you do not intend to assist me, I have no need of you,” I told him. “I will unravel the mystery of Felicity Whippleby’s death myself.”
    The Professor blew a disdainful burp toward me. I ignored this; he was being rude, but there was no reason to start a fight. I did not speak to him again, and after a while, he retired to his chambers for an afternoon nap. I would not be able to join him in repose; my serious meeting with the faculty was only an hour hence. I called for Joe Murray to decant the remainder of the wine. The appointed time for my hearing drew close, so continuing to drink claret would be imprudent and possibly detrimental.
    It was time for whisky.

 
    Chapter 6
    This place is the Devil, or at least his principal residence. They call it the University, but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for Study is the last pursuit of the Society; the Master eats, drinks, and sleeps, the Fellows drink, dispute and pun; the Employment of the Under graduates you will probably conjecture without my description.

    â€” Lord Byron, from an 1805 letter to John Hanson, his attorney
    â€œWe hope you’ll understand, Lord Byron, that our purpose here today is to ascertain whether you are having problems and to offer our assistance to you.” As he said this, the bearded professor pressed his thin lips into an approximation of a grin. “We have known you for some time. We’ve watched you grow, and we feel quite affectionate toward you. We’re concerned about your academic progress and your personal growth. But this is not an inquisition.”
    â€œThen why are your chairs so much bigger than mine?” I asked.
    The three concerned faculty members were seated in ornate, high-backed thrones behind a heavy oak table in a big, drafty lecture hall lit only by a couple of those flickering oil lamps and located in the bowels of one of the imposing buildings that made up the College’s Great Court. To get to the place, I’d had to pass through the massive Great Gate and under a huge, dour-looking statue of Henry VIII, who had founded the College. I wondered how old Henry would feel about my behavior, and what he’d think of the disposition of Felicity Whippleby.
    The old dons had provided me a humble three-legged stool to squat upon in the near darkness. The entire arrangement seemed orchestrated to make me feel small. Their plan had failed, however. Marble floors and Corinthian columns had no capacity to intimidate me, and I was not the sort of subservient youth who would prostrate himself before anyone with sallow flesh, colorless lips, and a craggy countenance. I was Lord Byron, and I could expand to fill any space.
    â€œI assure you, little thought was given to furniture in scheduling this meeting.”
    â€œWould you mind, then, if I took one of the big chairs?”
    A long pause, and then: “Of course. It was not our intention that you should be uncomfortable.”
    The professor on the left rose from his seat, and I took his position at the oak table while he situated himself upon the stool. I had taken courses from each of these men, but I had a poor attendance record, and even when I was present in class, I generally whiled away those hours of instruction in various states of reverie, inebriation, and slumber and had never bothered to learn my teachers’ names. Doing so seemed an unnecessary exertion.
    The dominant authority among them, to whom I’d been speaking, I just thought of as Old