If our esteemed colleague, Zungenschlag, does not find our room ventilated sufficiently, I should like to suggest that our esteemed colleague, Zungenschlag, have a ventilator set into his forehead. ZUNGENSCHLAG. I do- do- don't have to stand that!----I- I- I- I- do- do- don't have to st- st- st- stand rudeness!----I have my fi- fi- five senses! SONNENSTICH. I must ask our esteemed colleagues, Fliegentod and Zungenschlag, to preserve decorum. It seems to me that our guilt-laden pupil is already on the stairs. (_Habebald opens the door, whereupon Melchior, pale but collected, appears before the meeting._) SONNENSTICH. Come nearer to the table!----After Herr Stiefel became aware of the profligate deed of his son, the distracted father searched the remaining effects of his son Moritz, hoping if possible, to find the cause of the abominable deed, and discovered among them, in an unexpected place, a manuscript, which, while it did not make us understand the abominable deed, threw an unfortunate and sufficient light upon the moral disorder of the criminal. This manuscript, in the form of a dialogue entitled “The Nuptial Sleep,” illustrated with life-size pictures full of shameless obscenity, has twenty pages of long explanations that seek to satisfy every claim a profligate imagination can make upon a lewd book.---- MELCHIOR. I have---- SONNENSTICH. You have to keep quiet!----After Herr Stiefel had questioningly handed us this manuscript and we had promised the distracted father to discover the author at any price, we compared the handwriting before us with the collected handwriting of the fellow-students of the deceased profligate, and concluded, in the unanimous judgment of the teaching staff, as well as with the full coincidence of a valued colleague, the master of calligraphy, that the resemblance to your---- MELCHIOR. I have---- SONNENSTICH. You have to keep quiet!----In spite of this likeness, recognized as crushing evidence by incontrovertible authority, we believe that we should allow ourselves to go further and to take the widest latitude in examining the guilty one at first hand, in order to make him answerable to this charge of an offense against morals, and to discover its relationship to the resultant suicide.---- MELCHIOR. I have---- SONNENSTICH. You have to answer the exact questions which I shall put to you, one after the other, with a plain and modest “yes” or “no.”----Habebald! HABEBALD. At your service, Herr Rector! SONNENSTICH. The minutes!----I request our writing master, Herr Fliegentod, from now on to take down the proceedings as nearly verbatim as possible.----(_to Melchior._) Do you know this writing? MELCHIOR. Yes. SONNENSTICH. Do you know whose writing it is? MELCHIOR. Yes. SONNENSTICH. Is the writing in this manuscript yours? MELCHIOR. Yes. SONNENSTICH.