MELCHIOR. Speak right out from your heart!----Nobody sees or hears us here. MORITZ. Of course, my children will have to work all day long in yard or garden, or find their amusement in games which are combined with physical exercise. They must ride, do gymnastics, climb, and, above all things, must not sleep as soft as we do. We are weakened frightfully.----I believe one would not dream if one slept harder. MELCHIOR. From now until fall I shall sleep only in my hammock. I have shoved my bed back of the stove. It is a folding one. Last winter I dreamed once that I flogged our Lolo until he couldn't move a limb. That was the most gruesome thing I ever dreamed.----Why do you look at me so strangely? MORITZ. Have you experienced it yet? MELCHIOR. What? MORITZ. How do you say it? MELCHIOR. Manhood's emotion? MORITZ. M--'hm. MELCHIOR. Certainly! MORITZ. I also ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- MELCHIOR. I've known that for a long while!----Almost for a year. MORITZ. I was startled as if by lightning. MELCHIOR. Did you dream? MORITZ. Only for a little while--of legs in light blue tights, that strode over the teacher's desk--to be correct, I thought they wanted to go over it. I only saw them for an instant. MELCHIOR. George Zirschnitz dreamed of his mother. MORITZ. Did he tell you that? MELCHIOR. Out there on the gallow's road. MORITZ. If you only knew what I have endured since that night! MELCHIOR. Qualms of conscience? MORITZ. Qualms of conscience??----The anguish of death! MELCHIOR. Good Lord---- MORITZ. I thought I was incurable. I believed I was suffering from an inward hurt.----Finally I became calm enough to begin to jot down the recollections of my life. Yes, yes, dear Melchior, the last three weeks have been a Gethsemane for me. MELCHIOR. I was more or less prepared for it when it came. I felt a little ashamed of myself.----But that was all. MORITZ. And yet you are a whole year younger than I am. MELCHIOR. I wouldn't bother about that, Moritz. All my experience shows that the appearance of this phantom belongs to no particular age. You know that big Lämmermeier with the straw-colored hair and the hooked nose. He is three years older than I am. Little Hans Rilow says Lämmermeier dreams now only of tarts and apricot preserves. MORITZ. But, I ask you, how can Hans Rilow know that? MELCHIOR. He asked him. MORITZ. He asked him?----I didn't dare ask anybody. MELCHIOR. But you asked me. MORITZ.