“Do you choose to deny that this is your composition?”
“Then you are expelled, and I desire that you will quit the college to-morrow morning at the very latest.”
An envelope sealed with the college seal was immediately handed to him by one of the Fellows. It contained the sentence of expulsion.
Shelley dashed back to Hogg’s rooms, flung himself down on the sofa, and trembling with rage repeated “Expelled! . . . Expelled!”
The punishment was terrible. It put a stop to his studies; made it impossible for him to enter any other university; deprived him of the peaceful life he so much enjoyed; and drew down on his head his father’s grotesque and inextinguishable anger.
Hogg was as indignant as his friend, and carried away by a youthful generosity, instantly addressed a note to the Master and Fellows, expressing his grief and astonishment that such treatment could have been meted out to such a man as Shelley. He trusted that the sentence was not final.
The note was dispatched. The Conclave was still sitting. In a moment the porter returned with “the Dean’s compliments to Mr. Hogg and would he go down at once.”
It was the letter he had just written and he acknowledged it.
“And this?” putting into Hogg’s hand the pamphlet on Atheism.
With a wealth of arguments and the subtleties of a K.C., Hogg pointed out the absurdity of the question, and the injustice of punishing Shelley for having refused to answer it, the obligation lying on every man conscious of his rights. . . .
“That’s enough!” shouted the Master in a furious voice. “You’re expelled too!” . . . He seemed in a mood to have expelled every man in the college. Hogg was handed the sealed envelope in his turn.
In the course of the day a large official paper was affixed to the door of hall. It was signed by the Master and Dean, bore the college seal, and declared that Thomas Jefferson Hogg and Percy Bysshe Shelley were publicly expelled for refusing to answer certain questions put to them.
The exiles set off bag and baggage in the Oxford coach. Shelley had borrowed £20 from his booksellers, in order to pay his way in London while waiting news from his father.
Every lodging which he visited with Hogg appeared to him impossible, either the street was too noisy, the district too dirty, the maid-servant too plain. Finally, the name of Poland Street reminded him of Warsaw . . . of Freedom . . . he was certain that in Poland Street any one of the rooms must be worthy of a free man’s choice, and the very first which he visited, where there was a trellised paper, vine leaves, and huge bunches of green and purple grapes, seemed to him the most beautiful room in the world.