MORITZ--With animals--yes--it must happen all by itself. MELCHIOR--With people, too, just the same! I ask you, Moritz,--if your boys are sleeping on the same bed as the girls, and all of a sudden the first masculine impulses stir in them.... I’d like to bet with anybody.... MORITZ--Yes, you may be right there. But all the same---- MELCHIOR--And with your girls it would be absolutely the same at the corresponding age. Not that a girl exactly--of course, one can’t tell so well ... at least, it would be natural to expect ... and their curiosity, too, would be there, to do its share. MORITZ--One question by the way---- MELCHIOR--Well? MORITZ--You’ll answer? MELCHIOR--Surely. MORITZ--True? MELCHIOR--There’s my hand. Well, Moritz? MORITZ--Have you written your theme yet? MELCHIOR--Oh, speak out what you want to say! No one can hear us or see us. MORITZ--You understand my children would be made to work all day in the yard or the garden, or play games that called for real physical exertion. They’ll have to ride and wrestle and climb, and of all things not sleep so soft at night as we do. We are awfully softened! I don’t believe people dream when they have hard beds! MELCHIOR--I’m going to sleep from now till vintage time in just my hammock. I’ve shoved my bed behind the stove: they go together. Last winter I dreamt once that I whipped our Lolo till he couldn’t move a limb! That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever dreamt.--What makes you look at me so strangely? MORITZ--Have you felt them yet? MELCHIOR--What? MORITZ--How did you phrase it? MELCHIOR--Masculine impulses? MORITZ--M-hm. MELCHIOR--Yes indeed! MORITZ--I too. MELCHIOR--In fact I’ve known that quite a while--nearly a year. MORITZ--It struck me like a bolt of lightning! MELCHIOR--You had dreamt? MORITZ--Oh, just a flash ... of legs in sky-blue tights climbing over the teacher’s desk--to be exact, I thought they were going to climb over it. I only got a glimpse of them. MELCHIOR--George Zirschnitz dreamt of his =mother=. MORITZ--Did he tell you that? MELCHIOR--Out there on the gallows-path. MORITZ--If you only knew what I’ve gone through since that night! MELCHIOR--Qualms of conscience? MORITZ--Qualms of conscience?--Pangs of death! MELCHIOR--Good God.... MORITZ--I thought I was past cure. I thought I was suffering from some inward weakness.--I only began to feel easier when I set out to take notes on the memories of my life. Oh, yes, Melchior! the last three weeks have been a Gethsemane for me. MELCHIOR--I had been more or less prepared for it beforehand. I felt a bit ashamed, but that was all. MORITZ--And yet you’re almost a full year younger than me.