MORITZ--One moment, Melchior. It may be long before the chance recurs. You’ve no idea how everything depends on the time and place.... MELCHIOR--Where did =you= come from? MORITZ--From over there--from the wall. You knocked down my cross. I lie by the wall.--Give me your hand, Melchior.... MELCHIOR--You are =not= Moritz Stiefel! MORITZ--Give me your hand. I’m certain sure you’ll thank me. It’ll never be so easy for you again. This is a rarely fortunate meeting.--I came up especially---- MELCHIOR--Don’t you sleep? MORITZ--Not what you call sleeping.--We sit on church steeples, on lofty gables,--wherever we want.... MELCHIOR--Ever restless? MORITZ--For fun.--We scoot around young birch-trees, round lonely forest shrines. Over gatherings of people we hover, over sites of misfortune, over gardens and festival places. In the dwelling-houses we crouch in the chimney-corner and behind the bed-curtains.--Give me your hand!--We have little to do with each other but we see and hear everything that happens in the world. We know that everything is folly that men strive for and achieve,--and laugh at it. MELCHIOR--What good does that do? MORITZ--What’s it need to do?--We are out of reach--nor good nor evil can touch us any more. We stand high, high above the earth-folk, each for himself alone. We have nothing to do with each other because that bores us. None of us still has anything at heart whose loss he could feel. We are equally immeasurably far above both grief and rejoicing. We are content with ourselves, and that is all!--The living we despise beyond words: we can hardly pity them. They amuse us with their doings, because, being alive, they are not really to be pitied. We smile, each to himself, over their tragedies, and meditate.--Give me your hand! If you will give me your hand, you will fall over with laughing at the emotion with which you give me your hand.... MELCHIOR--Doesn’t that disgust you? MORITZ--We stand too high above it for that. We smile!--At my funeral I was among the mourners. I got a lot of entertainment from it. That is sublimity, Melchior! I made more noise than any of them, and slipped off to the wall to hold my sides for laughter. Our unapproachable sublimity is in fact the only standpoint that lets us assimilate the dirt.... I suppose I was laughed at too before I soared aloft! MELCHIOR--I have no desire to laugh at myself. MORITZ-- ... The living as such are truly not to be pitied.--I admit I should never have thought so either. And now it’s beyond my comprehension how one can be so naïve. Now I see thru the fraud so clearly that not the tiniest cloud is left.--How can you hesitate, Melchior? Give me your hand. In a turn of the head you’ll be standing sky-high above yourself.--Your living is a grievous omission, a sin of negligence.... MELCHIOR--Can you dead forget?