A dull, warm student just beginning his studies under Faust, the student comes knocking at his professor’s study seeking wisdom but is instead received by Mephistopheles, who is disguised as a scholar in cap and gown. The devil advises the student to focus on words over meanings, among other generally unsound intellectual habits, and the student takes his bad words to heart. Later, after graduating and becoming the baccalaureate, the student complains to Mephistopheles, again in disguise, that his education has been nothing but lies told by the old to the young, with the old not even believing the lies they told. Mephistopheles calls him a pompous ass for thinking that original thoughts still exist.