MORITZ--I’ve passed!--Melchior, I’ve passed! Oh, let the world go hang now--I have passed!--Who would have believed that I’d be promoted! I can’t realize it! Twenty times over I read it! I can’t believe it--but God be thanked, there it was--there it stayed! I =am= promoted!--[_Smiling._] I don’t know--I feel so queer--the earth’s going round.... Melchior, Melchior, if you only knew what I’ve gone thru! HANSY RILOW--Congratulations, Moritz!--Just be glad that you got away safe! MORITZ--You don’t know, Hansy--you can’t imagine what depended on it. For the last three weeks I’ve slunk past that door as though it were the mouth of hell. Then, to-day,--it was ajar! I think if a million had been offered me, nothing, oh, nothing could have held me back! Before I knew it I was standing in the middle of the room--I was opening the record book, turning the pages, finding--and during all that time--it makes me shudder!---- MELCHIOR--During all that time---- MORITZ--All that time the door behind me was standing wide open!--How I got out, how I got down the stairs, I don’t remember. HANSY RILOW--Did Ernest Roebel pass, too? MORITZ--Oh, yes, Hansy, sure! Ernest Roebel is promoted the same way. ROBERT--Then you just can’t have read right. Not counting the dunces’ bench, there are sixty-one of us with you and Roebel, and the upper classroom can’t hold more than sixty! MORITZ--I read perfectly right. Ernest Roebel is moved up just as I am--both of us, for the present, to be sure, only =provisionally=. During the first quarter it will be decided which of us must make room for the other.--Poor Roebel! God knows I’m not afraid for myself any more. I’ve looked too far down into the depths this time for that! OTTO--I bet you five marks it’ll be you that makes room. MORITZ--You haven’t got it. I don’t want to rob you.--Gosh, won’t I grind from now on!--Now I can tell you all too,--and you can believe it or not, it doesn’t matter now--but _I_ know, _I_ know how true it is: if I had not been promoted, I’d have shot myself. ROBERT--Brag! GEORGE--The coward! OTTO--I’d like to see you shoot anything! LÄMMERMEIER--Punch his face! MELCHIOR--[_Punches_ LÄMMERMEIER.] Come along, Moritz. Let’s go to the forester’s house. GEORGE--Do you really believe that rot? MELCHIOR--Is that your business?--Let ’em talk, Moritz. Just let’s get away, out o’ the city. [_He pulls him away. They meet_ PROFESSORS KNOCHENBRUCH _and_ HUNGERGURT, _touch their caps, and exeunt. The other boys vanish, to the other side._] KNOCHENBRUCH--It is beyond my comprehension, dear colleague, how the best of my pupils can feel drawn like that to the very worst of them all. HUNGERGURT--And beyond mine too, dear colleague. CURTAIN SCENE V.--_A sunny afternoon in a wood of beech and oak trees. Thick undergrowth. A big oak-trunk with mossy roots. By it_, WENDLA _stands, looking about for the path_. MELCHIOR _breaks thru the brush_.