“I might as well”

Maria Magdalena Theotoky is a graduate student at Spook, the College of St. John and Holy Ghost. She has signed up for New Testament Greek with a professor she calls Prof. the Rev., Simon Darcourt. Prof. the Rev. is checking his students’ Latin skills by asking for a translation of a short passage. It forms the motto, he says, for the work of his seminar: “Conloqui et conridere et vicissim benevole obsequi, simul leger libros dulciloquos, simul nugari et simul honestari.“ Maria is the only woman in the class of five. And she is the only student who can provide a translation.

Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (1981).

The Rebel Angels is the first novel of The Cornish Trilogy. Only one-thousand-and-something pages to go!

Related reading
All OCA Robertson Davies posts (Pinboard)

[The source for the passage: book 4, chapter 8. Augustine is describing pleasures with friends.]