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.