Free Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse

bell. Two or three boys who knew each other from home whispered timidly among themselves, but not for long. The others were strangers and each lay slightly depressed and deathly quiet in his bed. You could hear those who were asleep breathing deeply, or one would suddenly lift an arm and the linen rustled. Hans could not fall asleep for a long time. He listened to his neighbors breathing and after a while heard a strangely anxious noise coming from a bed two away from his. Someone was weeping, his blanket pulled over his head, and Hans felt oddly affected by these moans which seemed to reach him from a remote distance. He himself did not feel homesick though he missed his quiet little room. He only felt a slight dread of such an uncertain and novel situation and of his many new companions. It was not yet midnight and everyone in the hall had fallen asleep. The young sleepers lay side by side in their beds, their cheeks pressed into striped pillows: sad and stubborn, easygoing and timid boys vanquished by the same sweet, sound rest and oblivion. Above the old pointed roofs, towers, bow windows, turret, battlements and gothic arcades there rose a pale half-moon and its light lodged in cornices, on window ledges, poured over gothic windows and romanesque gateways and trembled pale-golden in the generous bowl of the cloister’s fountain. A few stripes and spots of yellowish light fell through three windows into Hellas’ sleeping quarters and kept the slumbering boys neighborly company, just as it had accompanied the dreams of generations of monks.
    *   *   *
    Next day, in the oratory, the boys were solemnly received into the academy. The teachers were dressed in their frock coats, the headmaster gave an address, the students sat rapt in thought in their chairs and stole an occasional glance at their parents, sitting way in the back. The mothers looked with pensive smiles at their sons; the fathers sat very erect, followed the speech closely and looked serious and determined. Proud and praiseworthy feelings and high hopes swelled in their breasts and it did not occur to a single one of them that this day he was selling his child for a financial advantage. At the end of the ceremony one student after the other was called by name, stepped up and was accepted into the academy with a handshake by the headmaster and was pledged that, provided he behaved himself, he would be duly sheltered and cared for by the state for the rest of his days. It did not occur to any of the boys, nor to their fathers, that all this would perhaps not really be free.
    Much more serious and moving was the moment when they took leave of their departing parents. These were now disappearing—some on foot, some by coach, others in any kind of transportation they had been able to arrange in the rush. For a long time handkerchiefs continued to flutter in the mild September air until finally the forest swallowed up the last of the travelers and the boys returned to the monastery in a gently pensive mood.
    â€œSo, the parents have left,” said the proctor.
    Now they began to look each other over and become acquainted; first, of course, the boys within each room. Inkpots were filled with ink and the lamps with kerosene, books and notebooks were laid out. They all tried to make themselves at home in their new rooms, a process during which they kept eying each other with curiosity, started their first conversations, asked each other where they were from, what school they had attended, and kept reminding each other of the state examination through which they had sweated together. Groups formed around certain desks and entered into extended conversations; here and there a boyish laugh ventured forth, and by evening the roommates were better acquainted than passengers at the end of a long voyage.
    Four of Hans’ companions in Hellas made an outstanding impression; the rest were more or less above average. First there was Otto