GEORGE.

Perhaps the Rector didn't take the key.

ROBERT.

Or Moritz Stiefel carries a skeleton key.

OTTO.

That may be possible.

LAEMMERMEIER.

If he has luck, he'll only be kept in.

ROBERT.

Besides getting a demerit mark in his report!

OTTO.

If this doesn't result in his being kicked out.

HANS RILOW.

There he is!

MELCHIOR.

White as a handkerchief.

(_Moritz comes in in great agitation._)

LAEMMERMEIER.

Moritz, Moritz, what have you done!

MORITZ.

Nothing----nothing----

ROBERT.

You're feverish!

MORITZ.

From good fortune----from happiness----from jubilation----

OTTO.

You were caught!

MORITZ.

I am promoted!----Melchior, I am promoted! Oh, I don't care what happens now!----I am promoted!----Who would have believed that I should be promoted!----I don't realize it yet!----I read it twenty times!----I couldn't believe it----Good Lord, it's so!----It's so; I am promoted! (_Laughing._) I don't know----I feel so queer----the ground turns around----Melchior, Melchior, can you realize what I've gone through?

HANS RILOW.

I congratulate you, Moritz----Only be happy that you got away with it!

MORITZ.

You don't know, Hans, you can't guess, what depends on it. For three weeks I've slunk past that door as if it were a h.e.l.lish abyss. To-day I saw it was ajar. I believe that if some one had offered me a million----nothing, oh nothing, could have held me.----I stood in the middle of the room,--I opened the report book----ran over the leaves----found----and during all that time----I shudder----

MELCHIOR.

----During all that time?

MORITZ.

During all that time the door behind me stood wide open. How I got out----how I came down the steps, I don't know.

HANS RILOW.

Is Ernest Robel promoted, too?

MORITZ.

Oh, certainly, Hans, certainly!----Ernest Robel is promoted, too.

ROBERT.

Then you can't have read correctly. Counting in the dunce's stool, we, with you and Robert, make sixty-one, and the upper cla.s.s-room cannot accommodate more than sixty.

MORITZ.

I read it right enough. Ernest Robel is given as high a rating as I am--both of us have conditions to work off.----During the first quarter it will be seen which of us has to make room for the other.

Poor Robel!----Heaven knows, I'm not afraid of myself any longer.

I've looked into it too deeply this time for that.

OTTO.

I bet five marks that you lose your place.

MORITZ.

You haven't anything. I won't rob you.----Lord, but I'll grind from to-day on!----I can say so now----whether you believe it or not----It's all the same now----I----I know how true it is; if I hadn't been promoted I would have shot myself.