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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit), by Frank Wedekind
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit)
+       A Tragedy in Four Acts
+
+Author: Frank Wedekind
+
+Translator: Samuel Eliot
+
+Release Date: August 13, 2009 [EBook #29682]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERDGEIST (EARTH-SPIRIT) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Roe, Alexander Bauer and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [ Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
+  possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation;
+  changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to the
+  original text are listed at the end of this text.
+
+  Text that was _italic_ in the original is marked with _.
+  Text that was =spaced= in the original is marked with =.]
+
+
+
+
+                           ERDGEIST
+
+
+
+
+                             LULU
+                      BY FRANK WEDEKIND
+                ERDGEIST (EARTH-SPIRIT) $1.00
+                PANDORA'S BOX (In Preparation)
+
+
+
+
+                           ERDGEIST
+
+
+                        (Earth-Spirit)
+
+
+
+
+                    A Tragedy in Four Acts
+                              BY
+                        FRANK WEDEKIND
+
+
+              Translated by Samuel A. Eliot, Jr.
+
+
+
+
+                           NEW YORK
+                   ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI
+                             1914
+
+
+
+
+                       Copyright, 1914
+                              by
+                   Albert and Charles Boni
+
+
+
+
+  "I was created out of ranker stuff
+  By Nature, and to the earth by Lust am drawn.
+  Unto the spirit of evil, not of good,
+  The earth belongs. What deities send to us
+  From heaven are only universal goods;
+  Their light gives gladness, but makes no man rich;
+  And in their state possession not obtains.
+  Therefore, the stone of price, all-treasured gold,
+  Must from the powers of falsehood be enticed,
+  The evil race that dwells beneath the day.
+  Not without sacrifice their favor is gained,
+  And no man liveth who from serving them
+  Hath extricated undefiled his soul."
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+  DR. SCHOEN, newspaper owner and editor.
+  ALVA, his son, a writer.
+  DR. GOLL, M.D.
+  SCHWARZ, an artist.
+  PRINCE ESCERNY, an African explorer.
+  ESCHERICH, a reporter.
+  SCHIGOLCH, a beggar.
+  RODRIGO, an acrobat.
+  HUGENBERG, a schoolboy (played by a girl.)
+  FERDINAND, a coachman.
+  LULU.
+  COUNTESS GESCHWITZ.
+  HENRIETTE, a servant.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+(At rise, is seen the entrance to a tent, out of which steps an
+animal-tamer, with long, black curls, dressed in a white cravat, a
+vermilion dress-coat, white trowsers and white top-boots. He carries
+in his left hand a dog-whip and in his right a loaded revolver, and
+enters to the sound of cymbals and kettle-drums.)
+
+  Walk in! Walk in to the menagery,
+  Proud gentlemen and ladies lively and merry!
+  With avid lust or cold disgust, the very
+  Beast without Soul bound and made secondary
+  To human genius, to stay and see!
+  Walk in, the show'll begin!--As customary,
+  One child to each two persons comes in free.
+
+  Here battle man and brute in narrow cages
+  Where one in haught disdain his long whip lashes
+  And one, with growls as when the thunder rages,
+  Against the man's throat murderously dashes,--
+  Where now the crafty conquers, now the strong,
+  Now man, now beast, lies cowed the floor along;
+  The animal rears,--the human on all fours!
+  One ice-cold look of dominance--
+  The beast submissive bows before that glance,
+  And the proud heel upon his neck adores.
+
+  Bad are the times! Ladies and gentlemen
+  Who once before my cage in thronging crescents
+  Crowded, now honor operas, and then
+  Ibsen, with their so highly valued presence.
+  My boarders here are so in want of fodder
+  That they reciprocally devour each other.
+  How well off at the theater is a player,
+  Sure of the meat upon his ribs, albeit
+  His frightful hunger may tear him and he it
+  And colleagues' inner cupboards be quite bare!--
+  Greatness in art we struggle to inherit,
+  Although the salary never match the merit.
+
+  What see you, whether in light or sombre plays?
+  =House-animals=, whose morals all must praise,
+  Who wreak pale spites in vegetarian ways,
+  And revel in an easy cry or fret,
+  Just like those others--down in the parquet.
+  This hero has a head by one dram swirled;
+  That is in doubt whether his love be right;
+  A third you hear despairing of the world,--
+  Full five acts long you hear him wail his plight,
+  And no man ends him with a merciful sleight!
+  But the =real= beast, the =beautiful=, =wild= beast,
+  Your eyes on =that=, _I_, ladies, only feast!
+
+  You see the Tiger, that habitually
+  Devours whatever falls before his bound;
+  The Bear, so ravenous originally,
+  Who at a late night-meal sinks dead to ground;
+  You see the Monkey, little and amusing,
+  From sheer ennui his petty powers abusing,--
+  He has some talent, of all greatness scant,
+  So, impudently, coquettes with his own want!
+  Upon my soul, within my tent's a mammal,
+  See, right behind the curtain, here,--a Camel!
+  And all my creatures fawn about my feet
+  When my revolver cracks--
+
+                  (He shoots into the audience.)
+
+                                     Behold!
+  Brutes tremble all around me. I am cold:
+  The =man= stays cold,--you, with respect, to greet.
+
+  Walk in!--You hardly trust yourselves in here?--
+  Then very well, judge for yourselves! Each sphere
+  Has sent its crawling creatures to your telling:
+  Chameleons and serpents, crocodiles,
+  Dragons, and salamanders chasm-dwelling,--
+  I know, of course, you're full of quiet smiles
+  And don't believe a syllable I say.--
+
+       (He lifts the entrance-flap and calls into the tent.)
+
+  Hi, Charlie!--bring our =Serpent= just this way!
+
+  (A stage-hand with a big paunch carries out the actress of =Lulu= in
+  her Pierrot costume, and sets her down before the animal-tamer.)
+
+  She was created to incite to sin,
+  To lure, seduce, poison--yea, murder, in
+  A manner no man knows.--My pretty beast,
+
+                      (Tickling Lulu's chin.)
+
+  Only be =unaffected=, and not pieced
+  Out with distorted, artificial folly,
+  Even if the critics praise thee for 't less wholly.
+  Thou hast no right to spoil the shape most fitting,
+  Most =true=, of =woman=, with meows and spitting!
+  And mind, all foolery and making faces
+  The =childish simpleness= of =Vice= disgraces.
+  Thou shouldst--to-day I speak emphatically--
+  Speak =naturally= and not unnaturally,
+  For the first principle in every art,
+  Since earliest times, was =True= and =Plain=, not =Smart=!
+
+                       (To the public.)
+
+  There's nothing special now to see in her,
+  But wait and watch what later will occur!
+  Her strength about the Tiger she coils stricter:
+  He roars and groans!--Who'll be the final victor?--
+  Hop, Charlie, march! Carry her to her place,
+
+  (The stage-hand carries Lulu in his arms; the animal-tamer
+                    pats her on the hips.)
+
+  Sweet innocence--my dearest treasure-case!
+
+      (The stage-hand carries Lulu back into the tent.)
+
+  And now I'll tell the best thing in the day:
+  My poll between the teeth of a beast of prey!
+  Walk in! Tho to be sure the show's not new,
+  Yet everyone takes pleasure in its view!
+  Wrench open this wild animal's jaws I dare,
+  And he to bite dares not! My pate's so =fair=,
+  So =wild=, so =gaily decked=, it wins respect!
+  I offer it him with confidence unchecked.
+  One =joke=, and my two temples crack!--but, lo,
+  The lightning of my eyes I will forego,
+  Staking my =life= against a =joke=! and throw
+  My whip, my weapons, down. I am in my skin!
+  I yield me to this beast!--His name do ye know?
+  --The honored public! that has just walked in!
+
+  (The animal-tamer steps back into the tent, accompanied
+                by cymbals and kettledrums.)
+
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+
+_A roomy studio. Entrance door at the rear, left. Another door at lower
+left to the bed-room. At centre, a platform for the model, with a
+Spanish screen behind it and a Smyrna rug in front. Two easels at lower
+right. On the upper one is the picture of a young girl's head and
+shoulders. Against the other leans a reversed canvas. Below these,
+toward centre, an ottoman, with a tiger-skin on it. Two chairs along
+the left wall. In the back-ground, right, a step-ladder._
+
+_Schoen sits on the foot of the ottoman, inspecting critically the
+picture on the further easel. Schwarz stands behind the ottoman, his
+palette and brushes in his hands._
+
+SCHOEN. Do you know, I'm getting acquainted with a brand new side of the
+lady.
+
+SCHWARZ. I have never painted anyone whose expression changed so
+continuously. I could hardly keep a single feature the same two days
+running.
+
+SCHOEN. (Pointing to the picture and observing him.) Do you find that in
+it?
+
+SCHWARZ. I have done everything imaginable to call forth some sort of
+quiet in her mood by my conversation during the sittings.
+
+SCHOEN. Then I understand the difference. (Schwarz dips his brush in the
+oil and draws it over the features of the face.) Do you think that
+makes it look more like her?
+
+SCHWARZ. We can only work with art as scientifically as possible.
+
+SCHOEN. Tell me--
+
+SCHWARZ. (Stepping back.) The color had sunk in pretty well, too.
+
+SCHOEN. (Looking at him.) Have you ever loved a woman in your life?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Goes to the easel, puts a color on it, and steps back on the
+other side.) The dress isn't made to stand out enough yet. We don't see
+the living body under it.
+
+SCHOEN. I make no doubt that the workmanship is good.
+
+SCHWARZ. If you'll step this way....
+
+SCHOEN. (Rising.) You must have told her regular ghost-stories.
+
+SCHWARZ. As far back as you can.
+
+SCHOEN. (Stepping back, knocks down the canvas that was leaning against
+the lower easel.) Excuse me--
+
+SCHWARZ. (Picking it up.) That's all right.
+
+SCHOEN. (Surprised.) What is that?
+
+SCHWARZ. Do you know her?
+
+SCHOEN. No. (Schwarz sets the picture on the easel. It is of a lady
+dressed as Pierrot with a long shepherd's crook in her hand.)
+
+SCHWARZ. A costume-picture.
+
+SCHOEN. But, really, you've succeeded with =her=.
+
+SCHWARZ. You know her?
+
+SCHOEN. No. And in that costume--?
+
+SCHWARZ. It isn't nearly finished yet. (Schoen nods.) What would you
+have? While she is posing for me I have the pleasure of entertaining
+her husband.
+
+SCHOEN. What?
+
+SCHWARZ. We talk about art, of course,--to complete my good fortune!
+
+SCHOEN. But how did you make such a charming acquaintance?
+
+SCHWARZ. As they're generally made. An ancient, tottering little man
+drops in on me here to know if I can paint his wife. Why, of course,
+were she as wrinkled as Mother Earth! Next day at ten prompt the doors
+fly open, and the fat-belly drives this little beauty in before him. I
+can feel even now how my knees shook. Then comes a sap-green lackey,
+stiff as a ramrod, with a package under his arm. Where is the
+dressing-room? Imagine my plight. I open the door there (pointing
+left). Just luck that everything was in order. The sweet thing vanishes
+into it, and the old fellow posts himself outside as a bastion. Two
+minutes later out she steps in this Pierrot. (Shaking his head.) I
+never saw anything like it. (He goes left and stares in at the
+bedroom.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Who has followed him with his eyes.) And the fat-belly stands
+guard?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Turning round.) The whole body in harmony with that
+impossible costume as if it had come into the world in it! Her way of
+burying her elbows in her pockets, of lifting her little feet from the
+rug,--the blood often shoots to my head....
+
+SCHOEN. One can see that in the picture.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Shaking his head.) People like us, you know--
+
+SCHOEN. Here the model is mistress of the conversation.
+
+SCHWARZ. She has never yet opened her mouth.
+
+SCHOEN. Is it possible?
+
+SCHWARZ. Allow me to show the costume to you. (Goes out left.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Before the Pierrot.) A devilish beauty. (Before the other
+picture.) There's more depth here. (Coming down stage.) He is still
+rather young for his age. (Schwarz comes back with a white satin
+costume.)
+
+SCHWARZ. What sort of material is that?
+
+SCHOEN. (Feeling it.) Satin.
+
+SCHWARZ. And all in one piece.
+
+SCHOEN. How does one get into it then?
+
+SCHWARZ. That I can't tell you.
+
+SCHOEN. (Taking the costume by the legs.) What enormous trowser-legs!
+
+SCHWARZ. The left one she pulls up.
+
+SCHOEN. (Looking at the picture.) Above the knee!
+
+SCHWARZ. She does that entrancingly!
+
+SCHOEN. And transparent stockings?
+
+SCHWARZ. Those have got to be painted, specially.
+
+SCHOEN. Oh, you can do that.
+
+SCHWARZ. And with it all a coquetry!
+
+SCHOEN. What brought you to that horrible suspicion?
+
+SCHWARZ. There are things that our school-philosophy lets itself never
+dream of. (He takes the costume back into his bedroom.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Alone.) When we sleep....
+
+SCHWARZ. (Comes back; looks at his watch.) If you wish to make her
+acquaintance too--
+
+SCHOEN. No.
+
+SCHWARZ. They must be here in a moment.
+
+SCHOEN. How much longer will the lady have to sit?
+
+SCHWARZ. I shall probably have to bear the pains of Tantalus three
+months longer.
+
+SCHOEN. I mean the other one.
+
+SCHWARZ. I beg your pardon. Three times more at most. (Going to the
+door with him.) If the lady will just leave me the upper part of the
+dress then....
+
+SCHOEN. With pleasure. Let us see you at my house again soon. For
+Heaven's sake! (As he collides in the door-way with Dr. Goll and Lulu.)
+
+SCHWARZ. May I introduce ...
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Schoen.) What are you doing here?
+
+LULU. (As Schoen kisses her hand in greeting.) You're not going already?
+
+DR. GOLL. But what wind blows you here?
+
+SCHOEN. I've been looking at the picture of my bride.
+
+LULU. (Coming forward.) Your bride is here?
+
+DR. GOLL. So you're having work done here, too?
+
+LULU. (Before the upper picture.) Look at it! Enchanting! Entrancing!
+
+DR. GOLL. (Looking round him.) Have you got her hidden somewhere round
+here?
+
+LULU. So that is the sweet young prodigy who's made a new person out of
+you....
+
+SCHOEN. She sits in the afternoon mostly.
+
+DR. GOLL. And you don't tell anyone about it?
+
+LULU. (Turning round.) Is she really so solemn?
+
+SCHOEN. Probably the after-effects of the seminary still, dear lady.
+
+DR. GOLL. (Before the picture.) One can see that you have been
+transformed profoundly.
+
+LULU. But now you mustn't let her wait any longer.
+
+SCHOEN. In a fortnight I think the engagement will come out.
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Lulu.) Let's lose no time. Hop!
+
+LULU. (To Schoen.) Just think, we came at a trot over the new bridge. I
+was driving, myself.
+
+DR. GOLL. (As Schoen prepares to leave.) No, no. We two will talk some
+more later. Get along, Nellie. Hop!
+
+LULU. Now you're going to talk about me!
+
+DR. GOLL. Our Apelles is already wiping his brushes.
+
+LULU. I had imagined it would be much more amusing.
+
+SCHOEN. But you have always the satisfaction of preparing for us the
+greatest and rarest pleasure.
+
+LULU. (Going left.) Oh, just wait!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Before the bedroom door.) If madame will be so kind....
+(Shuts the door after her and stands in front of it.)
+
+DR. GOLL. I christened her Nellie, you know, in our marriage-contract.
+
+SCHOEN. Did you?--Yes.
+
+DR. GOLL. What do you think of it?
+
+SCHOEN. Why not call her rather Mignon?
+
+DR. GOLL. That would have been good, too. I didn't think of that.
+
+SCHOEN. Do you consider the name so important?
+
+DR. GOLL. Hm.... You know, I have no children.
+
+SCHOEN. But you've only been married a couple of months.
+
+DR. GOLL. Thanks, I don't want any.
+
+SCHOEN. (Having taken out his cigarette-case.) Have a cigarette?
+
+DR. GOLL. (Helps himself.) I've plenty to do with this one. (To
+Schwarz.) Say, what's your little danseuse doing now?
+
+SCHOEN. (Turning round on Schwarz.) You and a danseuse?
+
+SCHWARZ. The lady was sitting for me at that time only as a favor. I
+made her acquaintance on a flying trip of the Cecilia Society.
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Schoen.) Hm.... I think we're getting a change of
+weather.
+
+SCHOEN. The toilet isn't going so quickly, is it?
+
+DR. GOLL. It's going like lightning! Woman has got to be a virtuoso in
+her job. So must we all, each in his job, if life isn't to turn to
+beggary. (Calls.) Hop, Nellie!
+
+LULU. (Inside.) Just a second!
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Schoen.) I can't get onto these blockheads. (Referring to
+Schwarz.)
+
+SCHOEN. I can't help envying them. These blockheads know nothing holier
+than an altar-cloth, and feel richer than you and me with 30,000-mark
+incomes. Besides, you can't be judge of a man who from childhood has
+lived from palette to mouth. Try to get at his finances: it's an
+arithmetic example! I haven't the moral courage, and one can easily
+burn one's fingers at it, too.
+
+LULU. (As Pierrot, steps out of the bed-room.) Here I am!
+
+SCHOEN. (Turns; after a pause.) Superb!
+
+LULU. (Nearer.) Well?
+
+SCHOEN. You put shame on the boldest fancy.
+
+LULU. How do you like me?
+
+SCHOEN. A picture before which art must despair.
+
+DR. GOLL. Don't you think so, too?
+
+SCHOEN. (To Lulu.) Have you any notion what you do?
+
+LULU. I'm perfectly possessed of myself!
+
+SCHOEN. Then you might be a little more discreet.
+
+LULU. But I'm only doing what's my duty.
+
+SCHOEN. You are powdered?
+
+LULU. What do you take me for!
+
+DR. GOLL. I've never seen such a white skin as she's got. I've told our
+Raphael here, too, to do just as little with the flesh tints as
+possible. For once, I can't get enthusiastic about the modern
+art-nonsense.
+
+SCHWARZ. (By the easels, preparing his paints.) At any rate, it's
+thanks to impressionism that present-day art can stand up beside the
+old masters without blushing.
+
+DR. GOLL. Oh, it can do quite well for a bit of butcher's work.
+
+SCHOEN. For Heaven's sake don't get excited! (Lulu falls on Goll's neck
+and kisses him.)
+
+DR. GOLL. They can see your undershirt. You must pull it lower.
+
+LULU. I would soonest have left it off. It only bothers me.
+
+DR. GOLL. He should be able to paint it out.
+
+LULU. (Taking the shepherd's crook that leans against the Spanish
+screen, and mounting the platform, to Schoen.) What would you say now,
+if you had to stand at attention for two hours?
+
+SCHOEN. I'd sell my soul to the devil for the chance to exchange with
+you.
+
+DR. GOLL. (Sitting, left.) Come over here. Here is my post of
+observation.
+
+LULU. (Plucking her left trowser-leg up to the knee, to Schwarz.) So?
+
+SCHWARZ. Yes....
+
+LULU. (Plucking it a thought higher.) So?
+
+SCHWARZ. Yes, yes....
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Schoen who has seated himself on the chair next him, with
+a gesture.) From this place I find her still more attractive.
+
+LULU. (Without stirring.) I beg pardon! I am equally attractive on all
+sides.
+
+SCHWARZ. (To Lulu.) The right knee further forward, please.
+
+SCHOEN. (With a gesture.) The body does show finer lines perhaps.
+
+SCHWARZ. The light to-day can be borne at least half way.
+
+DR. GOLL. Oh, you must throw on lots of it! Hold your brush a bit
+longer.
+
+SCHWARZ. Certainly, Dr. Goll.
+
+DR. GOLL. Treat her as a piece of still-life.
+
+SCHWARZ. Certainly, Doctor. (To Lulu.) You used to hold your head a wee
+mite higher, Mrs. Goll.
+
+LULU. (Raising her head.) Paint my lips a little open.
+
+SCHOEN. Paint snow on ice. If you get warm doing that, then instantly
+your art gets inartistic!
+
+SCHWARZ. Certainly, Doctor.
+
+DR. GOLL. Art, you know, must so reproduce nature that one can find at
+least some =spiritual= enjoyment in it!
+
+LULU. (Opening her mouth a little, to Schwarz.) So--look. I'll hold it
+half opened, so.
+
+SCHWARZ. As soon as the sun comes, the wall opposite throws warm
+reflections in here.
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Lulu.) You must keep your position just as if our
+Velasquez here didn't exist at all.
+
+LULU. Well, a painter =isn't= a man at all, anyway.
+
+SCHOEN. I don't think you ought to judge the whole profession by just
+one famous exception.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Stepping back from the easel.) I should have liked to have
+had to hire a different studio last fall.
+
+SCHOEN. (To Goll.) What I wanted to ask you--have you seen the little
+Murphy girl yet as a Peruvian pearl-fisher?
+
+DR. GOLL. I see her to-morrow for the fourth time. Prince Polossov took
+me. His hair has already got dark yellow again with delight.
+
+SCHOEN. So you find her quite fabulous too.
+
+DR. GOLL. Who ever wants to judge of that beforehand?
+
+LULU. I think someone knocked.
+
+SCHWARZ. Pardon me a moment. (Goes and opens the door.)
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Lulu.) You can safely smile at him with less bashfulness!
+
+SCHOEN. He makes nothing of it.
+
+DR. GOLL. And if he did!--What are we two sitting here for?
+
+ALVA SCHOEN. (Entering, still behind the Spanish screen.) May one come
+in?
+
+SCHOEN. My son!
+
+LULU. Oh! It's Mr. Alva!
+
+DR. GOLL. Don't mind. Just come along in.
+
+ALVA. (Stepping forward, shakes hands with Schoen and Goll.) Glad to see
+you. (Turning toward Lulu.) Do I see a-right? Oh, if only I could
+engage you for my title part!
+
+LULU. I don't think I could dance nearly well enough for your show!
+
+ALVA. But you do have a dancing-master such as cannot be found on any
+stage in Europe.
+
+SCHOEN. But what brings you here?
+
+DR. GOLL. Maybe you're having somebody or other painted here, too, in
+secret!
+
+ALVA. (To Schoen.) I wanted to take you to the dress rehearsal.
+
+DR. GOLL. (As Schoen rises.) Do you have 'em dance to-day in full
+costume?
+
+ALVA. Of course. Come along, too. In five minutes I must be on the
+stage. (To Lulu.) Unhappy!
+
+DR. GOLL. I've forgotten--what's the name of your ballet?
+
+ALVA. Dalailama.
+
+DR. GOLL. I thought =he= was in a madhouse.
+
+SCHOEN. You're thinking of Nietzsche, Doctor.
+
+DR. GOLL. You're right; I got 'em mixed up.
+
+ALVA. I have helped Buddhism to its legs.
+
+DR. GOLL. By his legs is the stage-poet known.
+
+ALVA. Corticelli dances the youthful Buddha as tho she had seen the
+light of the world by the Ganges.
+
+SCHOEN. So long as her mother lived, she danced with her legs.
+
+ALVA. Then when she got free she danced with her intelligence.
+
+DR. GOLL. Now she dances with her heart.
+
+ALVA. If you'd like to see her--?
+
+DR. GOLL. Thank you.
+
+ALVA. Come along with us!
+
+DR. GOLL. Impossible.
+
+SCHOEN. Anyway, we have no time to lose.
+
+ALVA. Come with us, doctor. In the third act you see Dalailama in his
+cloister, with his monks--
+
+DR. GOLL. The only thing I care about is the young Buddha.
+
+ALVA. Well, what's hindering you?
+
+DR. GOLL. I can't. I can't do it.
+
+ALVA. We're going to Peter's, after it. There you can express your
+admiration.
+
+DR. GOLL. Don't press it on me, please.
+
+ALVA. You'll see the tame monkey, the two Brahmans, the little
+girls....
+
+DR. GOLL. For heaven's sake, just keep away from me with your little
+girls!
+
+LULU. Reserve one of the proscenium boxes for us on Monday, Mr. Alva.
+
+ALVA. How could you doubt that I would, dear lady!
+
+DR. GOLL. When I come back the whole picture will be spoilt on me.
+
+ALVA. Well, it could be painted over.
+
+DR. GOLL. If I don't explain to this Caravacci every stroke of his
+brush--
+
+SCHOEN. Your fears are unfounded, I think....
+
+DR. GOLL. Next time, gentlemen!
+
+ALVA. The Brahmans are getting impatient. The daughters of Nirvana are
+shivering in their tights.
+
+DR. GOLL. Damned enchantment!
+
+SCHOEN. They'll quarrel with us, if we don't bring you with us.
+
+DR. GOLL. In five minutes I'll be back. (Stands down right, behind
+Schwarz and compares the picture with Lulu.)
+
+ALVA. (To Lulu.) Duty calls me, gracious lady!
+
+DR. GOLL. (To Schwarz.) You must model it a bit more here. The hair is
+bad. You aren't paying enough attention to your business!
+
+ALVA. Come on.
+
+DR. GOLL. Now, just hop it! Ten horses will not drag me to Peter's.
+
+SCHOEN. (Following Alva and Goll.) We'll take my carriage. It's waiting
+downstairs. (Exeunt.)
+
+SCHWARZ. (Leans over to the right, and spits.) Pack! If only that were
+life's end! The bread-basket!--paunch and mug! Now rears my artist's
+pride. (After a look at Lulu.) This company!-- (Gets up, goes up left,
+observes Lulu from all sides, and sits again at his easel.) The choice
+would be a hard one to make. If I may request Mrs. Goll to raise the
+right hand a little higher.
+
+LULU. (Grasps the crook as high as she can reach; to herself.) Who
+would have thought that was possible!
+
+SCHWARZ. I am quite ridiculous, you think?
+
+LULU. He's coming right back.
+
+SCHWARZ. I can do nothing but paint.
+
+LULU. There he is!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Rising.) Well?
+
+LULU. Don't you hear?
+
+SCHWARZ. Someone is coming....
+
+LULU. I knew it.
+
+SCHWARZ. It's the janitor. He's sweeping the stairs.
+
+LULU. Thank heaven!
+
+SCHWARZ. Do you perhaps accompany the doctor to his patients?
+
+LULU. Everything =but= that.
+
+SCHWARZ. Because, you are not accustomed to being alone.
+
+LULU. We have a housekeeper at home.
+
+SCHWARZ. She keeps you company?
+
+LULU. She has a lot of taste.
+
+SCHWARZ. What for?
+
+LULU. She dresses me.
+
+SCHWARZ. Do you go much to balls?
+
+LULU. Never.
+
+SCHWARZ. Then what do you need the dresses for?
+
+LULU. For dancing.
+
+SCHWARZ. You really dance?
+
+LULU. Czardas ... Samaqueca ... Skirt-dance.
+
+SCHWARZ. Doesn't--that--disgust you, then?
+
+LULU. You find me ugly?
+
+SCHWARZ. You don't understand me. But who gives you lessons then?
+
+LULU. Him.
+
+SCHWARZ. Who?
+
+LULU. Him.
+
+SCHWARZ. He?
+
+LULU. He plays the violin--
+
+SCHWARZ. Every day one learns something new of the world!
+
+LULU. I learned in Paris. I took lessons from Eugenie Fougere. She let
+me copy her costumes, too.
+
+SCHWARZ. What are =they= like?
+
+LULU. A little green lace skirt to the knee, all in ruffles,
+low-necked, of course, very low-necked and awfully tight-laced. Bright
+green petticoat, then brighter and brighter. Snow-white underclothes
+with a hand's-breadth of lace....
+
+SCHWARZ. I can no longer--
+
+LULU. Then paint!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Scraping the canvas.) Aren't you cold at all?
+
+LULU. God forbid! No. What made you ask? Are you so cold?
+
+SCHWARZ. Not to-day. No.
+
+LULU. Praise God, one can breathe!
+
+SCHWARZ. How so?... (Lulu takes a deep breath.) Don't do that, please!
+(Springs up, throws away his palette and brushes, walks up and down.)
+The boot-black only attends to her feet! His color doesn't eat into his
+money, either. If I go without supper to-morrow, no little society lady
+will ask me if I know anything about oyster-patties!
+
+LULU. Is he going out of his head?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Takes up his work again.) What ever drove the fellow to this
+test!
+
+LULU. I'd like it better, too, if he had stayed here.
+
+SCHWARZ. We are truly the martyrs of our calling!
+
+LULU. I didn't wish to cause you pain.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Hesitating, to Lulu.) If you--the left trowser-leg--a little
+higher--
+
+LULU. Here?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Steps to the platform.) Permit me....
+
+LULU. What do you want?
+
+SCHWARZ. I'll show you.
+
+LULU. You mustn't.
+
+SCHWARZ. You are nervous ... (Tries to seize her hand.)
+
+LULU. (Throws the crook in his face.) Let me alone! (Hurries to the
+entrance door.) You don't get me for a long time yet.
+
+SCHWARZ. You can't understand a joke.
+
+LULU. Oh, yes I can. I understand everything. Just you leave me be.
+You'll get nothing at all from me by force. Go to your work. You have
+no right to molest me. (Flees behind the ottoman.) Sit down behind your
+easel!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Trying to get around the ottoman.) As soon as I've punished
+you--you wayward, capricious--
+
+LULU. But you must have me, first! Go away. You can't catch me. In
+long clothes I'd have fallen into your clutches long ago--but in the
+Pierrot!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Throwing himself across the ottoman.) I've got you!
+
+LULU. (Hurls the tiger-skin over his head.) Good-night! (Jumps over the
+platform and climbs up the step-ladder.) I can see away over all the
+cities of the earth.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Unrolling himself from the rug.) This old skin!!
+
+LULU. I reach up into heaven, and stick the stars in my hair.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Clambering after her.) I'll shake it till you fall off!
+
+LULU. If you don't stop, I'll throw the ladder down. (Climbing higher.)
+Will you let go of my legs? God save the Poles! (Makes the ladder fall
+over, jumps onto the platform, and as Schwarz picks himself up from the
+floor, throws the Spanish screen down on his head. Hastening
+down-stage, by the easels.) I told you that you weren't going to get
+me.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Coming forward.) Let us make peace. (Tries to embrace her.)
+
+LULU. Keep away from me, or-- (She throws the easel with the finished
+picture at him, so that both fall crashing to the floor.)
+
+SCHWARZ. (Screams.) Merciful Heaven!
+
+LULU. (Upstage, right.) You knocked the hole in it yourself!
+
+SCHWARZ. I am ruined! Ten weeks' work, my journey, my exhibition! Now
+there is nothing more to lose! (Plunges after her.)
+
+LULU. (Springs over the ottoman, over the fallen step-ladder, and over
+the platform, down-stage.) A grave! Don't fall into it! (She stamps
+thru the picture on the floor.) She made a new man out of him! (Falls
+forward.)
+
+SCHWARZ. (Stumbling over the Spanish screen.) I am merciless now!
+
+LULU. (Up-stage.) Leave me in peace now. I'm getting dizzy. O Gott! O
+Gott!... (Comes forward and sinks down on the ottoman. Schwarz locks
+the door; then seats himself next her, grasps her hand, and covers it
+with kisses--then pauses, struggling with himself. Lulu opens her eyes
+wide.)
+
+LULU. He may come back.
+
+SCHWARZ. How d' you feel?
+
+LULU. As if I had fallen into the water....
+
+SCHWARZ. I love you.
+
+LULU. One time, I loved a student.
+
+SCHWARZ. Nellie--
+
+LULU. With four-and-twenty scars--
+
+SCHWARZ. I love you, Nellie.
+
+LULU. My name isn't Nellie. (Schwarz kisses her.) It's Lulu.
+
+SCHWARZ. I would call you Eve.
+
+LULU. Do you know what time it is?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Looking at his watch.) Half past ten. (Lulu takes the watch
+and opens the case.) You don't love me.
+
+LULU. Yes I do.... It's five minutes after half past ten.
+
+SCHWARZ. Give me a kiss, Eve!
+
+LULU. (Takes him by the chin and kisses him. Throws the watch in the
+air and catches it.) You smell of tobacco.
+
+SCHWARZ. Why so distant?
+
+LULU. It would be uncomfortable to--
+
+SCHWARZ. You're just making believe!
+
+LULU. You're making believe yourself, it seems to me. _I_ make believe?
+What makes you think that? =I never needed to do that.=
+
+SCHWARZ. (Rises, disconcerted, passing his hand over his
+forehead.) God in Heaven! The world is strange to me--!
+
+LULU. (Screams.) Only don't kill me!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Instantly whirling round.) =Thou hast never yet loved!=
+
+LULU. (Half raising herself.) =You have never yet loved ...!=
+
+DR. GOLL. (Outside.) Open the door!
+
+LULU. (Already sprung to her feet.) Hide me! O God, hide me!
+
+DR. GOLL. (Pounding on the door.) Open the door!
+
+LULU. (Holding back Schwarz as he goes toward the door.) He will strike
+me dead!
+
+DR. GOLL. (Hammering.) Open the door!
+
+LULU. (Sunk down before Schwarz, gripping his knees.) He'll beat me to
+death! He'll beat me to death!
+
+SCHWARZ. Stand up.... (The door falls crashing into the studio.
+Dr. Goll with blood-shot eyes rushes upon Schwarz and Lulu, brandishing
+his stick.)
+
+DR. GOLL. You dogs! You ...! (Pants, struggles for breath a few
+seconds, and falls headlong to the ground. Schwarz's knees tremble.
+Lulu has fled to the door. Pause.)
+
+SCHWARZ. Mister--Doctor--Doc--Doctor Goll--
+
+LULU. (In the door.) Please, though, first put the studio in order.
+
+SCHWARZ. Dr. Goll! (Leans over.) Doc-- (Steps back.) He's cut his
+forehead. Help me to lay him on the ottoman.
+
+LULU. (Shudders backward in terror.) No. No...
+
+SCHWARZ. (Trying to turn him over.) Dr. Goll.
+
+LULU. He doesn't hear.
+
+SCHWARZ. But you, help me, please.
+
+LULU. The two of us together couldn't lift him.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Straightening up.) We must send for a doctor.
+
+LULU. He is fearfully heavy.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Getting his hat.) Please, though, be so good as to put the
+place a little to rights while I'm away. (He goes out.)
+
+LULU. He'll spring up all at once. (Intensely.) Bussi! He just won't
+notice anything. (Comes down-stage in a wide circle.) He sees my feet,
+and watches every step I take. He has his eye on me everywhere.
+(Touches him with her toe.) Bussi! (Flinching, backward.) It's serious
+with him. The dance is over. He'll send me to prison. What shall I do?
+(Leans over, to the floor.) A strange, wild face! (Getting up.) And no
+one to do him the last services--isn't that sad! (Schwarz returns.)
+
+SCHWARZ. Still not come to himself?
+
+LULU. (Down right.) What shall I do?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Bending over Goll.) Doctor Goll.
+
+LULU. I almost think it's serious.
+
+SCHWARZ. Talk decently!
+
+LULU. =He= wouldn't say that to me. He makes me dance for him when he
+doesn't feel well.
+
+SCHWARZ. The doctor will be here in a moment.
+
+LULU. Doctoring won't help =him=.
+
+SCHWARZ. But people do what they can, in such cases!
+
+LULU. =He= doesn't think so.
+
+SCHWARZ. Then won't you at least--get dressed?
+
+LULU. Yes,--right off.
+
+SCHWARZ. What are you waiting for?
+
+LULU. Please ...
+
+SCHWARZ. What is it?
+
+LULU. Shut =his= eyes.
+
+SCHWARZ. You make me shiver.
+
+LULU. Not nearly so much as you make =me=!
+
+SCHWARZ. I?
+
+LULU. You're a born criminal.
+
+SCHWARZ. Doesn't this moment touch you at all, then?
+
+LULU. It hits me, too, some.
+
+SCHWARZ. Please, just you keep still now!
+
+LULU. It hits you some, too.
+
+SCHWARZ. You really didn't need to say that to a man, in such a moment.
+
+LULU. =Please ...!=
+
+SCHWARZ. Do what you think necessary. I don't know how.
+
+LULU. (Left of Goll.) He's looking at me.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Right of Goll.) And at me, too.
+
+LULU. You're a coward!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Shuts Goll's eyes with his handkerchief.) It's the first time
+in my life that anyone has called me that.
+
+LULU. Didn't you do it to your mother?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Nervously.) No.
+
+LULU. You were away, perhaps.
+
+SCHWARZ. No!
+
+LULU. Or else you were afraid?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Violently.) No!
+
+LULU. (Shivering, backward.) I didn't mean to insult you.
+
+SCHWARZ. She's still alive.
+
+LULU. Then you still have somebody.
+
+SCHWARZ. She's as poor as a beggar.
+
+LULU. I know what that is.
+
+SCHWARZ. Don't laugh at me!
+
+LULU. Now I am rich--
+
+SCHWARZ. It gives me cold shudders-- (Goes right.) She can't help it!
+
+LULU. (To herself.) What'll I do?
+
+SCHWARZ. (To himself.) Absolutely depraved! (They look at each other
+mistrustfully. Schwarz goes over to her and grips her hand.) Look me in
+the eyes!
+
+LULU. (Apprehensively.) What do you want?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Takes her to the ottoman and makes her sit next to him.) Look
+me in the eyes.
+
+LULU. I see myself in them as Pierrot.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Shoves her from him.) Confounded dancer-ing!
+
+LULU. I must change my clothes--
+
+SCHWARZ. (Holds her back.) One question--
+
+LULU. I can't answer it.
+
+SCHWARZ. Can you speak the truth?
+
+LULU. I don't know.
+
+SCHWARZ. Do you believe in a Creator?
+
+LULU. I don't know.
+
+SCHWARZ. Can you swear on anything?
+
+LULU. I don't know. Leave me alone. You're mad.
+
+SCHWARZ. What do you believe in, then?
+
+LULU. I don't know.
+
+SCHWARZ. Have you no soul, then?
+
+LULU. I don't know.
+
+SCHWARZ. Have you ever once loved--?
+
+LULU. I don't know.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Gets up, goes right, to himself.) She doesn't know!
+
+LULU. (Without moving.) I don't know.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Glancing at Goll.) He knows.
+
+LULU. (Nearer him.) What do you want to know?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Angrily.) Go, get dressed! (Lulu goes into the bed-room. To
+Goll.) Would I could change with you, you dead man! I give her back to
+you. I give my youth to you, too. I lack the courage and the faith.
+I've had to wait patiently too long. It's too late for me. I haven't
+grown up big enough for happiness. I have a hellish fear of it. Wake
+up! I didn't touch her. He opens his mouth. Mouth open and eyes shut,
+like the children. With me it's the other way round. Wake up, wake up!
+(Kneels down and binds his handkerchief round the dead man's head.)
+Here I beseech Heaven to make me =able= to be happy--to give me the
+strength and the freedom of soul to be just a weeny mite happy! For
+=her sake, only for her sake=. (Lulu comes out of the bed-room,
+completely dressed, her hat on, and her right hand under her left arm.)
+
+LULU. (Raising her left arm, to Schwarz.) Would you hook me up here? My
+hand trembles.
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+_A very ornamental parlor. Entrance-door rear, left. Curtained
+entrances right and left, steps leading up to the right one. On the
+back wall over the fire-place, Lulu's picture as Pierrot in a
+magnificent frame. Right, a tall mirror; a couch in front of it. Left,
+an ebony writing-table. Centre, a few chairs around a little Chinese
+table._
+
+_Lulu stands motionless before the mirror, in a green silk
+morning-dress. She frowns, passes a hand over her forehead, feels her
+cheeks, and draws back from the mirror with a discouraged, almost
+angry, look. Frequently turning round, she goes left, opens a casket on
+the writing-table, lights herself a cigarette, looks for a book among
+those that are lying on the table, takes one, and lies down on the
+couch opposite the mirror. After reading a moment, she lets the book
+sink, and nods seriously to herself in the glass; then resumes reading.
+Schwarz enters, left, palette and brushes in hand, and bends over Lulu,
+kisses her on the forehead, and goes up the steps, right._
+
+SCHWARZ. (Turning in the door-way.) Eve!
+
+LULU. (Smiling.) At your orders?
+
+SCHWARZ. Seems to me you look extra charming to-day.
+
+LULU. (With a glance at the mirror.) Depends on what you expect.
+
+SCHWARZ. Your hair breathes out a morning freshness....
+
+LULU. I've just come out of the water.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Approaching her.) I've an awful lot to do to-day.
+
+LULU. That's what you say to yourself.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Lays his palette and brushes down on the carpet, and sits on
+the edge of the couch.) What are you reading?
+
+LULU. (Reads.) "Suddenly she heard an anchor of refuge come nodding up
+the stairs."
+
+SCHWARZ. Who under the sun writes so absorbingly?
+
+LULU. (Reading.) "It was the postman with a money-order." (Henriette,
+the servant, comes in, upper left, with a hat-box on her arm and a
+little tray of letters which she puts on the table.)
+
+HENRIETTE. The mail. I'm going to take your hat to the milliner, madam.
+Anything else?
+
+LULU. No. (Schwarz signs to her to go out, which she does, slyly
+smiling.)
+
+SCHWARZ. What was it you dreamt all last night?
+
+LULU. You've asked me that twice already, to-day.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Rises, takes up the letters.) I tremble for news. Every day I
+fear the world may go to pieces. (Giving Lulu a letter.) For you.
+
+LULU. (Sniffs at the paper.) Madame Corticelli. (Hides it in her
+bosom.)
+
+SCHWARZ. (Skimming a letter.) My Samaqueca-dancer sold--for fifty
+thousand marks!
+
+LULU. Who says that?
+
+SCHWARZ. Sedelmeier in Paris. That's the third picture since our
+marriage. I hardly know how to save myself from my luck!
+
+LULU. (Pointing to the letters.) There are more there.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Opening an engagement announcement.) See. (Gives it to Lulu.)
+
+LULU. (Reads.) Sir Henry von Zarnikow has the honor to announce the
+engagement of his daughter, Charlotte Marie Adelaide, to Doctor Ludwig
+Schoen.
+
+SCHWARZ. (As he opens another letter.) At last! He's been an eternal
+while evading a public engagement. I can't understand it--a man of his
+standing and influence. What can be in the way of his marriage?
+
+LULU. What is that that you're reading?
+
+SCHWARZ. An invitation to take part in the international exhibition at
+St. Petersburg. I have no idea what to paint for it.
+
+LULU. Some entrancing girl or other, of course.
+
+SCHWARZ. Will you be willing to pose for it?
+
+LULU. God knows there are other pretty girls enough in existence!
+
+SCHWARZ. But with any other model--tho she be as racy as hell--I can't
+get such a full display of my powers.
+
+LULU. Then I must, I suppose. Wouldn't it go as well lying down?
+
+SCHWARZ. Really, I'd liefest have your taste arrange it for me.
+(Folding up the letters.) Don't let's forget to congratulate Schoen
+to-day, anyway. (Goes left and shuts the letters in the writing-table.)
+
+LULU. But we did that a long time ago.
+
+SCHWARZ. For his bride's sake.
+
+LULU. You can write to him again if you want.
+
+SCHWARZ. And now to work! (Takes up his brushes and palette, kisses
+Lulu, goes up the steps, right, and turns around in the door-way.) Eve!
+
+LULU. (Lets her book sink, smiling.) Your pleasure?
+
+SCHWARZ. (Approaching her.) I feel every day as if I were seeing you
+for the very first time.
+
+LULU. You're a terror.
+
+SCHWARZ. The fault is yours. (He sinks on his knees by the couch and
+caresses her hand.)
+
+LULU. (Stroking his hair.) You're =wasting= me.
+
+SCHWARZ. You =are mine=. But you are never more ensnaring than when you
+ought for God's sake to be, just once, real ugly for a couple of hours!
+Since I've had you, I have had nothing more. I'm entirely lost to
+myself.
+
+LULU. Not so excited! (Bell rings in the corridor.)
+
+SCHWARZ. (Pulling himself together.) Confound it!
+
+LULU. No one at home!
+
+SCHWARZ. Perhaps it's the art-dealer--
+
+LULU. And if it's the Chinese Emperor!
+
+SCHWARZ. One moment. (Exit.)
+
+LULU. (Visionary.) Thou? Thou? (Closes her eyes.)
+
+SCHWARZ. (Coming back.) A beggar, who says he was in the war. I have no
+small change on me. (Taking up his palette and brushes.) It's high
+time, too, that I should finally go to work. (Goes out, right.) (Lulu
+touches herself up before the glass, strokes back her hair, and goes
+out, returning leading in Schigolch.)
+
+SCHIGOLCH. I'd thought he was more of a swell--a little more glory to
+him. He's sort of embarrassed. He quaked a little in the knees when he
+saw =me= in front of him.
+
+LULU. (Shoving a chair round for him.) How can you beg from him, too?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. That's why I've dragged my seventy-seven summers just here.
+You told me he kept at his painting in the mornings.
+
+LULU. He hadn't got quite awake yet. How much do you need?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Two hundred, if you have that much handy. Personally, I'd
+like three hundred. Some of my clients have evaporated.
+
+LULU. (Goes to the writing-table and rummages in the drawer.) Whew, I'm
+tired!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Looking round him.) That's just what brought me, too. I've
+been wanting a long time to see how things were looking now with you.
+
+LULU. Well?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. It just sweeps over you. (Looking up.) Like with me fifty
+years ago. Instead of the loafing chairs we still had rusty old sabres
+then. Devil, but you've brought it pretty far! (Scuffing.) Carpets....
+
+LULU. (Giving him two bills.) I like best to walk on them bare-footed.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Scanning Lulu's portrait.) Is that you?
+
+LULU. (Winking.) Pretty fine?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. If all that's genuine.
+
+LULU. Have something sweet?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. What?
+
+LULU. (Getting up.) Elixir de Spaa.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. That doesn't help me--Does he drink?
+
+LULU. (Taking a decanter and glasses from a cupboard near the
+fireplace.) Not yet. (Coming down stage.) The cordial has such various
+effects!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. He comes to blows?
+
+LULU. He goes to sleep. (She fills the two glasses.)
+
+SCHIGOLCH. When he's drunk, you can see right into his insides.
+
+LULU. I'd rather =not=. (Sits opposite Schigolch.) Tell me about it.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. The streets keep on getting longer, and my legs shorter.
+
+LULU. And your harmonica?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Has bad air, like me with my asthma. I just keep a-thinking
+it isn't worth the trouble to make it better. (They clink glasses.)
+
+LULU. (Emptying her glass.) I thought you'd come to an end a long time
+ago--
+
+SCHIGOLCH. To an end--already up and away? I thought so, too. But no
+matter how early the sun goes down, still we aren't let lie quiet. I'm
+hoping for winter. Perhaps then my (coughing) --my--my asthma will
+invent some opportunity to carry me off.
+
+LULU. (Filling the glasses.) Do you think they could have forgotten you
+on the other side?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Would be possible, for it certainly isn't going like it
+usually does. (Stroking her knee.) Now you tell--not seen you a long
+time--my little Lulu.
+
+LULU. (Jerking back, smiling.) Life is beyond me!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. What do you know about it? You're still so young!
+
+LULU. That you call me Lulu.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Lulu, isn't it? Have I ever called you anything else?
+
+LULU. In the memory of man my name has no longer been Lulu.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Another way of naming?
+
+LULU. Lulu sounds to me quite ante-diluvian.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Children! Children!
+
+LULU. My name now is--
+
+SCHIGOLCH. As if the principle wasn't always the same!
+
+LULU. You mean--?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. What is it now?
+
+LULU. =Eve.=
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Lept, hopped, skipped, jumped....
+
+LULU. I'm listening.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Gazing round.) This is the way I dreamt of it for you.
+You've aimed straight for it. (Seeing Lulu sprinkling herself with
+perfume.) What's that?
+
+LULU. Heliotrope.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Does that smell better than you?
+
+LULU. (Sprinkling him.) That needn't bother you any more.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Who would have dreamt of this royal luxury before!
+
+LULU. When I think back--Ugh!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Stroking her knee.) How's it going with you, then? You
+still keep at the French?
+
+LULU. I lie and sleep.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. That's genteel. That always looks like something. And
+afterwards?
+
+LULU. I stretch--till it cracks.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. And when it has cracked?
+
+LULU. What do you mind about that?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. What do I mind about that? What do I mind? I'd rather live
+till the last trump and renounce all heavenly joys than leave my Lulu
+deprived of anything down here behind me. What do I mind about that?
+It's my sympathy. To be sure, my better self =is= already
+transfigured--but I still have some sense for this world.
+
+LULU. I haven't.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. You're too well off.
+
+LULU. (Shuddering.) Idiot....
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Better than with the old dancing-bear?
+
+LULU. (Sadly.) I don't dance any more.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. For him it was time, too.
+
+LULU. Now I am-- (Stops.)
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Speak how it is with you, child! I believed in you when
+there was no more to be seen in you than your two big eyes. What are
+you now?
+
+LULU. A beast....
+
+SCHIGOLCH. That you--! And what kind of a beast? A fine beast! An
+elegant beast! A glorified beast! Then I'll let them bury me. We're
+through with prejudices--even with the one against the corpse-washer.
+
+LULU. You needn't be afraid that you will be washed once more.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Doesn't matter, either. One gets dirty again.
+
+LULU. (Sprinkling him.) It would call you back to life again!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. We are mud.
+
+LULU. I beg your pardon! I rub grease into myself every day and then
+powder on top of it.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Probably worth while, too, on the dressed-up mucker's
+account.
+
+LULU. It makes the skin like satin.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. As if it weren't just dirt all the same!
+
+LULU. Thank you. I wish to be worth biting at!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. We are. Give a big dinner down below there pretty soon. Keep
+open house.
+
+LULU. Your guests will hardly over-eat themselves at it.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Patience, girl! Your worshippers won't put you in alcohol,
+either. It's "schoene Melusine" as long as it keeps buoyant. Afterwards?
+They don't take it at the zoological garden. (Rising.) The gentle
+beasties might get stomach-cramps.
+
+LULU. (Getting up.) Have you enough?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. There's still enough left over to plant a juniper on my
+grave. I'll find my own way out. (Exit. Lulu follows him, and presently
+returns with Dr. Schoen.)
+
+SCHOEN. What's your father doing here?
+
+LULU. What's the matter?
+
+SCHOEN. If I were your husband that man would never come over my
+threshold.
+
+LULU. You can speak intimately. He's not here. (Referring to Schwarz.)
+
+SCHOEN. Thank you, I'd rather not.
+
+LULU. I don't understand.
+
+SCHOEN. I know that. (Offering her a seat.) I should like to speak with
+you just on that subject.
+
+LULU. (Sitting down uncertainly.) Why didn't you tell me so yesterday,
+then?
+
+SCHOEN. Please, nothing now about yesterday. I did tell you two years
+ago.
+
+LULU. (Nervously.) Oh, yes,--Hm!
+
+SCHOEN. Please be kind enough to cease your visits to my house.
+
+LULU. May I offer you an elixir--
+
+SCHOEN. Thanks. No elixir. Have you understood me? (Lulu shakes her
+head.) Good. You have the choice. You force me to the most extreme
+measures:--either act in accordance with your station--
+
+LULU. Or?
+
+SCHOEN. Or--you compel me--I should have to turn to that person who is
+responsible for your behavior.
+
+LULU. What makes you imagine that?
+
+SCHOEN. I shall request your husband, himself to watch over your ways.
+(Lulu rises, goes up the steps, right.) Where are you going?
+
+LULU. (Calls thru the curtains.) Walter!
+
+SCHOEN. (Springing up.) Are you mad?
+
+LULU. (Turning round.) Aha!
+
+SCHOEN. I have made the most superhuman efforts to raise you in society.
+You can be ten times as proud of your name as of your intimacy with me.
+
+LULU. (Comes down the steps and puts her arm around Schoen's neck.) Why
+are you still afraid, now that you're at the zenith of your hopes?
+
+SCHOEN. No comedy! The zenith of my hopes? I am at last engaged: I have
+now the hope of bringing my bride into a clean house.
+
+LULU. (Sitting.) She has developed delightfully in the two years!
+
+SCHOEN. She no longer looks thru one so earnestly.
+
+LULU. She is now, for the first time, a woman. We can meet each other
+wherever it seems suitable to you.
+
+SCHOEN. We shall meet each other nowhere but in the presence of your
+husband!
+
+LULU. You don't believe yourself what you say.
+
+SCHOEN. Then =he= must believe it. Go on and call him! Thru his marriage
+to you, thru all that I've done for him, he has become my friend.
+
+LULU. (Rising.) Mine, too.
+
+SCHOEN. Then I'll cut down the sword over my head.
+
+LULU. You have, indeed, chained me up. But I owe my happiness to you.
+You will get friends by the crowd as soon as you have a pretty young
+wife again.
+
+SCHOEN. You judge women by yourself! He's got the sense of a child or he
+would have tracked out your doublings and windings long ago.
+
+LULU. I only wish he would! Then, at last he'd get out of his
+swaddling-clothes. He puts his trust in the marriage contract he has in
+his pocket. Trouble is past and gone. One can now give oneself and let
+oneself go as if one were at home. That isn't the sense of a =child=!
+It's banal! He has no education; he sees nothing; he sees neither me
+nor himself; he is blind, blind, blind....
+
+SCHOEN. (Half to himself.) When =his= eyes open!!
+
+LULU. Open his eyes for him! I'm going to ruin. I'm neglecting myself.
+He doesn't know me at all. What am I to him? He calls me darling and
+little devil. He would say the same to any piano-teacher. He makes no
+pretensions. Everything is alright, to him. That comes from his never
+in his life having felt the need of intercourse with women.
+
+SCHOEN. If that's true!
+
+LULU. He admits it perfectly openly.
+
+SCHOEN. A man who has painted them, rags and tags and velvet gowns,
+since he was fourteen.
+
+LULU. Women make him anxious. He trembles for his health and comfort.
+But he isn't afraid of =me=!
+
+SCHOEN. How many girls would deem themselves God knows how blessed in
+your situation.
+
+LULU. (Softly pleading.) Seduce him. Corrupt him. You know how. Take
+him into bad company--you know the people. I am nothing to him but a
+woman, just woman. He makes me feel so ridiculous. He will be prouder
+of me. He doesn't know any differences. I'm thinking my head off, day
+and night, how to shake him up. In my despair I dance the can-can. He
+yawns; and drivels something about obscenity.
+
+SCHOEN. Nonsense. He is an artist, though.
+
+LULU. At least he believes he is.
+
+SCHOEN. That's the chief thing!
+
+LULU. When _I_ pose for him.... He believes, too, that he's a famous
+man.
+
+SCHOEN. We =have= made him one.
+
+LULU. He believes everything. He's as mistrustful as a thief, and lets
+himself be lied to, till one loses all respect! When we first knew each
+other I informed him I had never yet loved-- (Schoen falls into an
+easy-chair.) Otherwise he would really have taken me for a fallen
+woman!
+
+SCHOEN. You make God knows what exorbitant demands on =legitimate=
+relations!
+
+LULU. I make no exorbitant demands. Often I even dream still of Goll.
+
+SCHOEN. He was, at any rate, not banal!
+
+LULU. He is there, as if he had never been away. Only he walks as tho
+in his socks. He isn't angry with me; he's awfully sad. And then he is
+fearful, as tho he were there without the permission of the police.
+Otherwise, he feels at ease with us. Only he can't quite get over my
+having thrown away so much money since--
+
+SCHOEN. You yearn for the whip once more?
+
+LULU. Maybe. I don't dance any more.
+
+SCHOEN. Teach him to do it.
+
+LULU. A waste of trouble.
+
+SCHOEN. Out of a hundred women, ninety educate their husbands to suit
+themselves.
+
+LULU. He loves me.
+
+SCHOEN. That's fatal, of course.
+
+LULU. He loves me--
+
+SCHOEN. That is an unbridgeable abyss.
+
+LULU. He doesn't know me, but he loves me! If he had anything like a
+correct idea of me, he'd tie a stone around my neck and sink me in the
+sea where it's deepest.
+
+SCHOEN. Let's finish this? (He gets up.)
+
+LULU. As you say.
+
+SCHOEN. I've married you off. Twice I have married you off. You live in
+luxury. I've created a position for your husband. If that doesn't
+satisfy you, and he laughs in his sleeve at it, I don't pretend to meet
+ideal claims; but--leave me out of the game, out of it!
+
+LULU. (Resolutely.) If I belong to any person on this earth, I belong
+to you. Without you I'd be--I won't say where. You took me by the hand,
+gave me food to eat, had me dressed,--when I was going to steal your
+watch. Do you think that can be forgotten? Anybody else would have
+called the police. You sent me to school, and had me learn manners. Who
+but you in the whole world has ever thought anything of me? I've danced
+and posed, and was glad to be able to earn my living that way. But
+=love= at command, I can't!
+
+SCHOEN. (Raising his voice.) Leave =me= out! Do what you will. I'm not
+coming to make scandal; I'm coming to shake the scandal from my neck.
+My engagement is costing me sacrifices enough! I had imagined that with
+a healthy young man, than whom a woman of your years can wish herself
+no better, you would, at last, have been contented. If you are under
+obligations to me, don't throw yourself a third time in my way! Am I to
+wait yet longer before putting my pile in security? Am I to risk the
+whole success of my patents falling into the water again after two
+years? What good is it to me to be your married-man, when =you= can be
+seen going in and out of my house at every hour of the day? Why the
+devil didn't Dr. Goll stay alive just one year more! With him you were
+in safe keeping. Then I'd have had my wife long since under my roof!
+
+LULU. And what would you have had then? The kid gets on your nerves.
+The child is too uncorrupted for you. She's been much too carefully
+brought up. What should I have against your marriage? But you are
+deceived about yourself if you think that on account of your impending
+marriage you may express your contempt to me.
+
+SCHOEN. Contempt? I shall soon give the child the right idea. If
+anything is contemptible, it's your intrigues!
+
+LULU. (Laughing.) Am I jealous of the child? That never once entered my
+head.
+
+SCHOEN. Then why talk about the child? The child is not even a whole
+year younger than you are. Leave me my freedom to live what life I
+still have. No matter how the child's been brought up, she's got her
+five senses just like you.... (Schwarz appears, right, brush in hand.)
+
+SCHWARZ. What's the matter here?
+
+LULU. (To Schoen.) Well? Go on. Talk.
+
+SCHWARZ. What's the matter with you two?
+
+LULU. Nothing that touches you--
+
+SCHOEN. (Sharply.) Quiet!
+
+LULU. He's had enough of me. (Schwarz leads her off, to the right.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Turning over the leaves in one of the books on the table.) It
+had to come out--I must have my hands free at last!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Coming back.) Is that a way to jest?
+
+SCHOEN. (Pointing to a chair.) Please.
+
+SCHWARZ. What is it?
+
+SCHOEN. Please.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Seating himself.) Well?
+
+SCHOEN. (Seating himself.) You have married half a million....
+
+SCHWARZ. Is it gone?
+
+SCHOEN. Not a penny.
+
+SCHWARZ. Explain to me the peculiar scene....
+
+SCHOEN. You have married half a million--
+
+SCHWARZ. No one can make a crime of that.
+
+SCHOEN. You have created a name for yourself. You can work unmolested.
+You need to deny yourself no wish--
+
+SCHWARZ. What have you two got against me?
+
+SCHOEN. For six months you've been revelling in all the heavens. You
+have a wife whom the world envies you, and she deserves a man whom she
+can respect--
+
+SCHWARZ. Doesn't she respect me?
+
+SCHOEN. No.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Depressed.) I come from the dark depths of society. She is
+above me. I cherish no more ardent wish than to become her equal.
+(Offers Schoen his hand.) Thank you.
+
+SCHOEN. (Pressing it, half embarrassed.) Don't mention it.
+
+SCHWARZ. (With determination.) Speak!
+
+SCHOEN. Keep a little more watch on her.
+
+SCHWARZ. I--on her?
+
+SCHOEN. We are not children! We don't trifle! She demands that she be
+taken seriously. Her value gives her a perfect right to be.
+
+SCHWARZ. What does she do, then?
+
+SCHOEN. You have married half a million!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Rises; beside himself.) She--?
+
+SCHOEN. (Takes him by the shoulder.) No, that's not the way! (Forces
+him to sit.) We must speak with each other very seriously here.
+
+SCHWARZ. What does she do?
+
+SCHOEN. First count on your fingers what you have to thank her for, and
+then--
+
+SCHWARZ. What does she do--man!!
+
+SCHOEN. And then make yourself responsible for your faults, and no one
+else.
+
+SCHWARZ. With whom? With whom?
+
+SCHOEN. If we should shoot each other--
+
+SCHWARZ. Since when, then?
+
+SCHOEN. (Evasive.) --I don't come here to make scandal, I come to save
+you from the scandal.
+
+SCHWARZ. You have misunderstood her.
+
+SCHOEN. (Embarrassed.) That will not do for me. I can't see you go on
+living in blindness. The girl deserves to be a respectable woman. Since
+I have known her she has improved as she developed.
+
+SCHWARZ. Since you have known her? Since when have you known her then?
+
+SCHOEN. Since about her twelfth year.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Bewildered.) She told me nothing about that.
+
+SCHOEN. She sold flowers in front of the Alhambra Cafe. Every evening
+between twelve and two she pressed in among the guests, bare-footed.
+
+SCHWARZ. She told me nothing of that.
+
+SCHOEN. She did right there. I'm telling you, so you may see that you
+have not to do with moral degeneracy. The girl is, on the contrary, of
+extraordinarily good disposition.
+
+SCHWARZ. She said she had grown up with an aunt.
+
+SCHOEN. That was the woman I gave her to. She was her best pupil. The
+mothers used to make her an example to their children. She has the
+feeling for duty. It is simply and solely your mistake if you have till
+now neglected to take her on her best sides.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Sobbing.) O God!--
+
+SCHOEN. (With emphasis.) No O God!! Nothing of the happiness you have
+cost can be changed. Done is done. You over-rate yourself against your
+better knowledge if you persuade yourself you will lose. You stand to
+gain. But with "O God" nothing is gained. A greater friendliness I have
+not yet shown you: I speak plainly and offer you my help. Don't show
+yourself unworthy of it!
+
+SCHWARZ. (From now on more and more broken up.) When I first knew her,
+she told me she had never loved.
+
+SCHOEN. When a widow says that--! It does her credit that she chose you
+for a husband. Make the same claims on yourself and your happiness is
+without a blot.
+
+SCHWARZ. She says he made her wear short dresses.
+
+SCHOEN. But he married her! That was her master-stroke. How she brought
+the man to it is beyond me. You really must know it now: you are
+enjoying the fruits of her diplomacy.
+
+SCHWARZ. How did she get to know Dr. Goll then?
+
+SCHOEN. Through me! It was after my wife's death, when I was making the
+first advances to my present fiancee. She stuck herself in between. She
+had fixed her mind on becoming my wife.
+
+SCHWARZ. (As if seized with a horrible suspicion.) And then when her
+husband died?
+
+SCHOEN. You married half a million!!
+
+SCHWARZ. (Wailing.) O, to have stayed where I was! To have died of
+hunger!
+
+SCHOEN. (Superior.) Do you think, then, that _I_ make no compromises?
+Who is there that does not compromise? You have married half a million.
+You are to-day one of the foremost artists. That can't be done without
+money. You are not the man to sit in judgment on her. You can't
+possibly treat an origin like Mignon's according to the notions of
+bourgeois society.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Quite distraught.) Who are you speaking of?
+
+SCHOEN. Of her father! You're an artist, I say: your ideals are on a
+different plane from those of a wage-worker.
+
+SCHWARZ. I don't understand a word of all that.
+
+SCHOEN. I am speaking of the inhuman conditions out of which, thanks to
+her good management, the girl has developed into what she is!
+
+SCHWARZ. Who?
+
+SCHOEN. Who? Your wife.
+
+SCHWARZ. =Eve?=
+
+SCHOEN. I called her Mignon.
+
+SCHWARZ. I thought her name was Nellie?
+
+SCHOEN. Dr. Goll called her so.
+
+SCHWARZ. I called her Eve--
+
+SCHOEN. What her real name is I don't know.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Absently.) Perhaps she knows.
+
+SCHOEN. With a father like hers, she is, with all her faults, a miracle.
+I don't understand you--
+
+SCHWARZ. He died in a madhouse--?
+
+SCHOEN. He was here just now!
+
+SCHWARZ. Who was here?
+
+SCHOEN. Her father.
+
+SCHWARZ. Here--in my house?
+
+SCHOEN. He squeezed by me as I came in. And there are the two glasses
+still.
+
+SCHWARZ. She says he died in the madhouse.
+
+SCHOEN. Let her feel she's in authority--! She craves nothing but the
+compulsion to unconditional obedience. With Dr. Goll she was in heaven,
+and with him there was no joking.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Shaking his head.) She said she had never loved--
+
+SCHOEN. But you, make a beginning with yourself. Pull yourself together!
+
+SCHWARZ. She has sworn--!
+
+SCHOEN. You can't demand a sense of duty in her before you know your own
+task.
+
+SCHWARZ. By her mother's grave!
+
+SCHOEN. She never knew her mother, let alone the grave. Her mother
+hasn't got a grave.
+
+SCHWARZ. I don't fit in society. (He is in desperation.)
+
+SCHOEN. What's the matter?
+
+SCHWARZ. Pain--horrible pain!
+
+SCHOEN. (Gets up, steps back; after a pause.) Guard her for yourself:
+she's yours. The moment is decisive. To-morrow she may be lost to you.
+
+SCHWARZ. (Pointing to his breast.) Here, here.
+
+SCHOEN. You have married half-- (Reflecting.) She is lost to you if you
+let this moment slip!
+
+SCHWARZ. If I could weep! Oh, if I could cry out!
+
+SCHOEN. (With a hand on his shoulder.) You're suffering--
+
+SCHWARZ. (Getting up, apparently quiet.) You are right, quite right.
+
+SCHOEN. (Gripping his hand.) Where are you going?
+
+SCHWARZ. To speak with her.
+
+SCHOEN. Right! (Accompanies him to the door, left. Coming back.) That
+was tough work. (After a pause, looking right.) He had taken her into
+the studio before though? (A fearful groan, left. He hurries to the
+door and finds it locked.) Open! Open the door!
+
+LULU. (Stepping thru the hangings, right.) What's--
+
+SCHOEN. Open it!
+
+LULU. (Comes down the steps.) That is horrible.
+
+SCHOEN. Have you an ax in the kitchen?
+
+LULU. He'll open it right off--
+
+SCHOEN. I can't kick it down.
+
+LULU. When he's had his cry out.
+
+SCHOEN. (Kicking the door.) Open! (To Lulu.) Bring me an ax.
+
+LULU. Send for the doctor--
+
+SCHOEN. You are not yourself.
+
+LULU. It serves you right. (Bell rings in the corridor. Schoen and Lulu
+stare at each other. Then Schoen slips up-stage and stands in the
+doorway.)
+
+SCHOEN. I mustn't let myself be seen here.
+
+LULU. Perhaps it's the art-dealer. (The bell rings again.)
+
+SCHOEN. But if we don't answer it--
+
+LULU. (Steals toward the door; but Schoen holds her.) --
+
+SCHOEN. Stop. It sometimes happens that one is not just at hand-- (He
+goes out on tip-toes. Lulu turns back to the locked door and listens.
+Schoen returns with Alva.) Please be quiet.
+
+ALVA. (Very excited.) A revolution has broken out in Paris!
+
+SCHOEN. Be quiet.
+
+ALVA. (To Lulu.) You're as pale as death.
+
+SCHOEN. (Rattling at the door.) Walter! Walter! (A death-rattle heard
+behind the door.)
+
+LULU. God pity you.
+
+SCHOEN. Haven't you brought an ax?
+
+LULU. If there's one there-- (Goes slowly out, upper left.)
+
+ALVA. He's just keeping us in suspense.
+
+SCHOEN. A revolution has broken out in Paris?
+
+ALVA. In the editors' room they're beating their heads against the
+wall. No one knows what he ought to write. (The bell rings in the
+corridor.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Kicking against the door.) Walter!
+
+ALVA. Shall I force it in?
+
+SCHOEN. I can do that. Who is it coming now? (Standing up.) To enjoy
+life and let others be responsible for it--
+
+LULU. (Coming back with a kitchen ax.) Henriette has come home.
+
+SCHOEN. Shut the door behind you.
+
+ALVA. Give it here. (Takes the ax and pounds with it between the jamb
+and the lock.)
+
+SCHOEN. You must hold it nearer the end.
+
+ALVA. It's cracking-- (The lock gives; Alva lets the ax fall and
+staggers back.) (Pause.)
+
+LULU. (To Schoen, pointing to the door.) After you. (Schoen flinches,
+drops back.) Are you getting--dizzy? (Schoen wipes the sweat from his
+forehead and goes in.)
+
+ALVA. (From the couch.) Ghastly!
+
+LULU. (Stopping in the door-way, finger on lips, cries out sharply.)
+Oh! Oh! (Hurries to Alva.) I can't stay here.
+
+ALVA. Horrible!
+
+LULU. (Taking his hand.) Come.
+
+ALVA. Where to?
+
+LULU. I can't be alone. (Goes out with Alva, right.)
+
+(Schoen comes back, a bunch of keys in his hand, which shows blood. He
+pulls the door to, behind him, goes to the writing-table, opens it, and
+writes two notes.)
+
+ALVA. (Coming back, right.) She's changing her clothes.
+
+SCHOEN. She has gone?
+
+ALVA. To her room. She's changing her clothes. (Schoen rings. Henriette
+comes in.)
+
+SCHOEN. You know where Dr. Bernstein lives?
+
+HENRIETTE. Of course, Doctor. Right next door.
+
+SCHOEN. (Giving her one note.) Take that over to him, please.
+
+HENRIETTE. In case the doctor is not at home?
+
+SCHOEN. He is at home. (Giving her the other note.) And take this to
+police headquarters. Take a cab. (Henriette goes out.) I am judged!
+
+ALVA. My blood is cold.
+
+SCHOEN. (Toward the left.) The fool!
+
+ALVA. He waked up to something, perhaps?
+
+SCHOEN. He has been too absorbed with himself. (Lulu appears on the
+steps, right, in dust-coat and hat.)
+
+ALVA. Where are you going now?
+
+LULU. Out. I see it on all the walls.
+
+SCHOEN. Where are his papers?
+
+LULU. In the desk.
+
+SCHOEN. (At the desk.) Where?
+
+LULU. Lower right-hand drawer. (She kneels and opens the drawer,
+emptying the papers on the floor.) Here. There is nothing to fear. He
+had no secrets.
+
+SCHOEN. Now I can just withdraw from the world.
+
+LULU. (Still kneeling.) Write a pamphlet about him. Call him
+Michelangelo.
+
+SCHOEN. What good'll that do? (Pointing left.) There lies my engagement.
+
+ALVA. That's the curse of your game!
+
+SCHOEN. Shout it thru the streets!!
+
+ALVA. (Pointing to Lulu.) If you had treated that girl fairly and
+justly when my mother died--
+
+SCHOEN. My engagement is bleeding to death there!
+
+LULU. (Getting up.) I sha'n't stay here any longer.
+
+SCHOEN. In an hour they'll be selling extras. I dare not go across the
+street!
+
+LULU. Why, what can you do to help it?
+
+SCHOEN. That's just it! They'll stone me for it!
+
+ALVA. You must get away--travel.
+
+SCHOEN. To leave the scandal a free field!
+
+LULU. (By the couch.) Ten minutes ago he was lying here.
+
+SCHOEN. This is the reward for all I've done for him! In one second he
+wrecks my whole life for me!
+
+ALVA. Control yourself, please!
+
+LULU. (On the couch.) There's no one but ourselves here.
+
+ALVA. But =our= position?
+
+SCHOEN. (To Lulu.) What will you say to the police?
+
+LULU. Nothing.
+
+ALVA. He didn't want to remain a debtor to his destiny.
+
+LULU. He always thought of death immediately.
+
+SCHOEN. He thought what a human being can only dream of.
+
+LULU. He has paid dearly for it.
+
+ALVA. He had what =we= don't have!
+
+SCHOEN. (Suddenly violent.) I know your reasons! I have no cause to
+consider you! If you try every means to prevent having any brothers and
+sisters, that's all the more reason why I should get more children.
+
+ALVA. You've a poor knowledge of men.
+
+LULU. You get out an extra yourself!
+
+SCHOEN. (With passionate indignation.) He had no moral sense! (Suddenly
+controlling himself again.) Paris in revolution--?
+
+ALVA. Our editors act as though they'd been struck. Everything has
+stopped dead.
+
+SCHOEN. That's got to help me over this! Now if only the police would
+come. The minutes are worth more than gold. (The bell rings in the
+corridor.)
+
+ALVA. There they are-- (Schoen starts to the door. Lulu jumps up.)
+
+LULU. Wait, you've got blood--
+
+SCHOEN. Where?
+
+LULU. Wait, I'll wipe it. (Sprinkles her handkerchief with heliotrope
+and wipes the blood from Schoen's hand.)
+
+SCHOEN. It's your husband's blood.
+
+LULU. It leaves no trace.
+
+SCHOEN. Monster!
+
+LULU. You will marry me, though. (The bell rings in the corridor.) Only
+have patience, children. (Schoen goes out and returns with Escherich, a
+reporter.)
+
+ESCHERICH. (Breathless.) Allow me to--to introduce myself--
+
+SCHOEN. You've run?
+
+ESCHERICH. (Giving him his card.) From police headquarters. A suicide,
+I understand.
+
+SCHOEN. (Reads.) Fritz Escherich, correspondent of the "News and
+Novelties." Come along.
+
+ESCHERICH. One moment. (Takes out his note-book and pencil, looks
+around the parlor, writes a few words, bows to Lulu, writes, turns to
+the broken door, writes.) A kitchen-ax. (Starts to lift it.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Holding him back.) Excuse me.
+
+ESCHERICH. (Writing.) Door broken open with a kitchen-ax. (Examines the
+lock.)
+
+SCHOEN. (His hand on the door.) Look before you, my dear sir.
+
+ESCHERICH. Now if you will have the kindness to open the door-- (Schoen
+opens it. Escherich lets book and pencil fall, clutches at his hair.)
+Merciful Heaven! God!!
+
+SCHOEN. Look it all over carefully.
+
+ESCHERICH. I can't look at it!
+
+SCHOEN. (Snorting scornfully.) Then what did you come here for?
+
+ESCHERICH. To--to cut up--to cut up his throat with a razor!
+
+SCHOEN. Have you seen it all?
+
+ESCHERICH. That must feel--
+
+SCHOEN. (Draws the door to, steps to the writing-table.) Sit down. Here
+is paper and pen. Write.
+
+ESCHERICH. (Mechanically taking his seat.) I can't write--
+
+SCHOEN. (Behind his chair.) Write! Persecution--mania....
+
+ESCHERICH. (Writes.) Per-secu-tion--mania. (The bell rings in the
+corridor.)
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+
+_A theatrical dressing-room, hung with red. Door upper right. Across
+upper left corner, a Spanish screen. Centre, a table set endwise, on
+which dance costumes lie. Chair on each side of this table. Lower
+right, a smaller table with a chair. Lower left, a high, very wide,
+old-fashioned arm-chair. Above it, a tall mirror, with a make-up stand
+before it holding puff, rouge, etc., etc._
+
+_Alva is at lower right, filling two glasses with red wine and
+champagne._
+
+ALVA. Never since I began to work for the stage have I seen a public so
+uncontrolled in enthusiasm.
+
+LULU. (Voice from behind the screen.) Don't give me too much red wine.
+Will he see me to-day?
+
+ALVA. Father?
+
+LULU. Yes.
+
+ALVA. I don't know if he's in the theater.
+
+LULU. Doesn't he want to see me at all?
+
+ALVA. He has so little time.
+
+LULU. His =bride= occupies him.
+
+ALVA. Speculations. He gives himself no rest. (Schoen enters.) You?
+We're just speaking of you.
+
+LULU. Is he there?
+
+SCHOEN. You're changing?
+
+LULU. (Peeping over the Spanish screen, to Schoen.) You write in all the
+papers that I'm the most gifted danseuse who ever trod the stage, a
+second Taglioni and I don't know what else--and you haven't once found
+me gifted enough to convince yourself of the fact.
+
+SCHOEN. I have so much to write. You see, I was right: there were
+hardly any seats left. You must keep rather more in the proscenium.
+
+LULU. I must first accustom myself to the light.
+
+ALVA. She has kept herself strictly to her part.
+
+SCHOEN. (To Alva.) You must get more out of your performers! You don't
+know enough yet about the technique. (To Lulu.) What do you come as
+now?
+
+LULU. As a flower-girl.
+
+SCHOEN. (To Alva.) In tights?
+
+ALVA. No. In a skirt to the ankles.
+
+SCHOEN. It would have been better if you hadn't ventured on symbolism.
+
+ALVA. I look at a dancer's feet.
+
+SCHOEN. The point is, what the public looks at. An apparition like =her=
+has no need, thank heaven, of your symbolic mummery.
+
+ALVA. The public doesn't look as if it was bored!
+
+SCHOEN. Of course not; because I have been working for her success in
+the press for six months. Has the prince been here?
+
+ALVA. Nobody's been here.
+
+SCHOEN. Who lets a dancer come on thru two acts in raincoats?
+
+ALVA. Who is the prince?
+
+SCHOEN. Shall we see each other afterwards?
+
+ALVA. Are you alone?
+
+SCHOEN. With acquaintances. At Peter's?
+
+ALVA. At twelve?
+
+SCHOEN. At twelve. (Exit.)
+
+LULU. I'd given up hoping he'd ever come.
+
+ALVA. Don't let yourself be misled by his grumpy growls. If you'll only
+be careful not to spend your strength before the last number
+begins-- (Lulu steps out in a classical, sleeveless dress, white with a
+red border, a bright wreath in her hair and a basket of flowers in her
+hands.)
+
+LULU. He doesn't seem to have noticed at all how cleverly you have used
+your performers.
+
+ALVA. I won't blow in sun, moon and stars in the first act!
+
+LULU. (Sipping.) You disclose me by degrees.
+
+ALVA. I knew, though, that you knew all about changing costumes.
+
+LULU. If I'd wanted to sell my flowers this way before the Alhambra
+cafe, they'd have had me behind lock and key right off the very first
+night.
+
+ALVA. Why? You were a child!
+
+LULU. Do you remember me when I entered your room the first time?
+
+ALVA. You wore a dark blue dress with black velvet.
+
+LULU. They had to stick me somewhere and didn't know where.
+
+ALVA. My mother had been lying sick two years then.
+
+LULU. You were playing theater, and asked me if I wanted to play too.
+
+ALVA. To be sure! We played theater!
+
+LULU. I see you still--the way you shoved the figures back and forth.
+
+ALVA. For a long time my most terrible memory was when all at once I
+saw clearly into your relations--
+
+LULU. You got icy curt towards me then.
+
+ALVA. Oh, God--I saw in you something so infinitely far above me. I had
+perhaps a higher devotion to you than to my mother. Think--when my
+mother died--I was seventeen--I went and stood before my father and
+demanded that he make you his wife on the spot or we'd have to fight a
+duel.
+
+LULU. He told me that at the time.
+
+ALVA. Since I've grown older, I can only pity him. He will never
+comprehend me. There he is making up a story for himself about a little
+diplomatic game that puts me in the role of laboring against his
+marriage with the Countess.
+
+LULU. Does she still look as innocently as ever at the world?
+
+ALVA. She loves him. I'm convinced of that. Her family has tried
+everything to make her turn back. I don't think any sacrifice in the
+world would be too great for her for his sake.
+
+LULU. (Holds out her glass to him.) A little more, please.
+
+ALVA. (Giving it to her.) You're drinking too much.
+
+LULU. He shall learn to believe in my success! He doesn't believe in
+any art. He believes only in papers.
+
+ALVA. He believes in nothing.
+
+LULU. He brought me into the theater in order that someone might
+eventually be found rich enough to marry me.
+
+ALVA. Well, alright. Why need that trouble us?
+
+LULU. I am to be glad if I can dance myself into a millionaire's heart.
+
+ALVA. God defend that anyone should take you from us!
+
+LULU. You've composed the music for it, though.
+
+ALVA. You know that it was always my wish to write a piece for you.
+
+LULU. I am not at all made for the stage, however.
+
+ALVA. You came into the world a dancer!
+
+LULU. Why don't you write your things at least as interesting as life
+is?
+
+ALVA. Because if we did no man would believe us.
+
+LULU. If I didn't know more about acting than the people on the stage
+do, what might not have happened to me?
+
+ALVA. I've provided your part with all the impossibilities imaginable,
+though.
+
+LULU. With hocus-pocus like that no dog is lured from the stove in the
+real world.
+
+ALVA. It's enough for me that the public finds itself most tremendously
+stirred up.
+
+LULU. But _I_'d like to find myself most tremendously stirred up.
+(Drinks.)
+
+ALVA. You don't seem to be in need of much more for that.
+
+LULU. No one of them realizes anything about the others. Each thinks
+that he alone is the unhappy victim.
+
+ALVA. But how can you feel that?
+
+LULU. There runs up one's body such an icy shudder.
+
+ALVA. You are incredible. (An electric bell rings over the door.)
+
+LULU. My cape.... I shall keep in the proscenium!
+
+ALVA. (Putting a wide shawl round her shoulders.) Here is your cape.
+
+LULU. He shall have nothing more to fear for his shameless boosting.
+
+ALVA. Keep yourself under control!
+
+LULU. God grant that I dance the last sparks of intelligence out of
+their heads. (Exit.)
+
+ALVA. Yes, a more interesting piece could be written about her. (Sits,
+right, and takes out his note-book. Writes. Looks up.) First act:
+Dr. Goll. Rotten already! I can call up Dr. Goll from purgatory or
+wherever else he's doing penance for his orgies, but I'll be made
+responsible for his sins. (Long-continued but much deadened applause
+and bravos outside.) They rage there as in a menagery when the meat
+appears at the cage. Second act: Walter Schwarz. Still more impossible!
+How our souls do strip off their last coverings in the light of such
+lightning-strokes! Third act? Is it really to go on this way? (The
+attendant opens the door from outside and lets Escerny enter. He acts
+as though he were at home, and without greeting Alva takes the chair
+near the mirror. Alva continues, not heeding him.) It can not go on
+this way in the third act!
+
+ESCERNY. Up to the middle of the third act it didn't seem to go so well
+to-day as usual.
+
+ALVA. I was not on the stage.
+
+ESCERNY. Now she's in full career again.
+
+ALVA. She's lengthening each number.
+
+ESCERNY. I once had the pleasure of meeting the artiste at Schoen's.
+
+ALVA. My father has brought her before the public by some critiques in
+his paper.
+
+ESCERNY. (Bowing slightly.) I was conferring with Dr. Schoen about the
+publication of my discoveries at Lake Tanganika.
+
+ALVA. (Bowing slightly.) His remarks leave no doubt that he takes the
+liveliest interest in your work.
+
+ESCERNY. It's a very good thing in the artiste that the =public= does
+not exist for her at all.
+
+ALVA. As a child she learned the quick changing of clothes; but I was
+surprised to discover such an expressive dancer in her.
+
+ESCERNY. When she dances her solo she is intoxicated with her own
+beauty, with which she herself seems to be mortally in love.
+
+ALVA. Here she comes. (Gets up and opens the door. Enter Lulu.)
+
+LULU. (Without wreath or basket, to Alva.) You're called for. I was
+three times before the curtain. (To Escerny.) Dr. Schoen is not in your
+box?
+
+ESCERNY. Not in mine.
+
+ALVA. (To Lulu.) Didn't you see him?
+
+LULU. He is probably away again.
+
+ESCERNY. He has the last parquet-box on the left.
+
+LULU. It seems he is ashamed of me!
+
+ALVA. There wasn't a good seat left for him.
+
+LULU. (To Alva.) Ask him, though, if he likes me better now.
+
+ALVA. I'll send him up.
+
+ESCERNY. He applauded.
+
+LULU. Did he really?
+
+ALVA. Give yourself some rest. (Exit.)
+
+LULU. I've got to change again now.
+
+ESCERNY. But your maid isn't here?
+
+LULU. I can do it quicker alone. Where did you say Dr. Schoen was
+sitting?
+
+ESCERNY. I saw him in the left parquet-box farthest back.
+
+LULU. I've still five costumes before me now; dancing-girl, ballerina,
+queen of the night, Ariel, and Lascaris.... (She goes behind the
+Spanish screen.)
+
+ESCERNY. Would you think it possible that at our first meeting I
+expected nothing more than to make the acquaintance of a young lady of
+the literary world?... (He sits at the left of the centre table, and
+remains there to the end of the scene.) Have I perhaps erred in my
+judgment of your nature, or did I rightly interpret the smile which the
+thundering storms of applause called forth on your lips? That you are
+secretly pained at the necessity of profaning your art before people of
+doubtful disinterestedness? (Lulu makes no answer.) That you would
+gladly exchange at any moment the shimmer of publicity for a quiet,
+sunny happiness in distinguished seclusion? (Lulu makes no answer.)
+That you feel in yourself enough dignity and high rank to fetter a man
+to your feet--in order to enjoy his utter helplessness?... (Lulu makes
+no answer.) That in a comfortable, richly furnished villa you would
+feel in a more fitting place than here,--with unlimited means, to live
+completely as your =own mistress=? (Lulu steps forth in a short,
+bright, pleated petticoat and white satin bodice, black shoes and
+stockings, and spurs with bells at her heels.)
+
+LULU. (Busy with the lacing of her bodice.) If there's just one evening
+I don't go on, I dream the whole night that I'm dancing and feel the
+next day as if I'd been racked.
+
+ESCERNY. But what difference could it make to you to see before you
+instead of this mob =one= spectator, specially elect?
+
+LULU. That would make no difference. I don't see anybody anyway.
+
+ESCERNY. A lighted summer-house--the splashing of the water near at
+hand.... I am forced in my exploring-trips to the practise of a quite
+inhuman tyranny--
+
+LULU. (Putting on a pearl necklace before the mirror.) A good school!
+
+ESCERNY. And if I now long to deliver myself unreservedly into the
+power of a woman, that is a natural need for relaxation.... Can you
+imagine a greater life-happiness for a woman than to have a man
+entirely in her power?
+
+LULU. (Jingling her heels.) Oh yes!
+
+ESCERNY. (Disconcerted.) Among cultured men you will find not one who
+doesn't lose his head over you.
+
+LULU. Your wishes, however, no one will fulfill without deceiving you.
+
+ESCERNY. To be deceived by a girl like you must be ten times more
+enrapturing than to be uprightly loved by anybody else.
+
+LULU. You have never in your life been uprightly loved by a girl!
+(Turning her back to him and pointing.) Would you undo this knot for
+me? I've laced myself too tight. I am always so excited getting
+dressed.
+
+ESCERNY. (After repeated efforts.) I'm sorry; I can't.
+
+LULU. Then leave it. Perhaps I can. (Goes left.)
+
+ESCERNY. I confess that I am lacking in deftness. Maybe I was not
+docile enough with women.
+
+LULU. And probably you don't have much opportunity to be so in Africa,
+either?
+
+ESCERNY. (Seriously.) Let me openly admit to you that my loneliness in
+the world embitters many hours.
+
+LULU. The knot is almost done....
+
+ESCERNY. What draws me to you is not your dancing. It's your physical
+and mental refinement, as it is revealed in every one of your
+movements. Anyone who is so much interested in art as I am could not be
+deceived in that. For ten evenings I've been studying your spiritual
+life in your dance, until to-day when you entered as the flower-girl I
+became perfectly clear. Yours is a grand nature--unselfish; you can see
+no one suffer; you embody the joy of life. As a wife you will make a
+man happy above all things.... You are all open-heartedness. You would
+be a poor actor. (The bell rings again.)
+
+LULU. (Having somewhat loosened her laces, takes a deep breath and
+jingles her spurs.) Now I can breathe again. The curtain is going up.
+(She takes from the centre table a skirt-dance costume--of bright
+yellow silk, without a waist, closed at the neck, reaching to the
+ankles, with wide, loose sleeves--and throws it over her.) I must
+dance.
+
+ESCERNY. (Rises and kisses her hand.) Allow me to remain here a little
+while longer.
+
+LULU. Please, stay.
+
+ESCERNY. I need some solitude. (Lulu goes out.) What is to be
+aristocratic? To be eccentric, like me? Or to be perfect in body and
+mind, like this girl? (Applause and bravos outside.) He who gives me
+back my faith in men, gives me back my life. Should not the children of
+this woman be more princely, body and soul, than the children whose
+mother has no more vitality in her than I have felt in me until to-day?
+(Sitting, right; ecstatically.) The dance has ennobled her body....
+(Alva enters.)
+
+ALVA. One is never sure a moment that some miserable chance may not
+throw the whole performance out for good. (He throws himself into the
+big chair, left, so that the two men are in exactly reversed positions
+from their former ones. Both converse somewhat boredly and
+apathetically.)
+
+ESCERNY. But the public has never yet shown itself so grateful.
+
+ALVA. She's finished the skirt-dance.
+
+ESCERNY. I hear her coming....
+
+ALVA. She isn't coming. She has no time. She changes her costume in the
+wings.
+
+ESCERNY. She has two ballet-costumes, if I'm not mistaken?
+
+ALVA. I find the white one more becoming to her than the rose.
+
+ESCERNY. Do you?
+
+ALVA. Don't you?
+
+ESCERNY. I find she looks too body-less in the white tulle.
+
+ALVA. I find she looks too animal in the rose-tulle.
+
+ESCERNY. I don't find that.
+
+ALVA. The white tulle expresses more the child-like in her nature.
+
+ESCERNY. The rose tulle expresses more the female in her nature. (The
+electric bell rings over the door. Alva jumps up.)
+
+ALVA. For heaven's sake, what is wrong?
+
+ESCERNY. (Getting up too.) What's the matter? (The electric bell goes
+on ringing to the close of the dialogue.)
+
+ALVA. Something's gone wrong there--
+
+ESCERNY. How can you get so suddenly frightened?
+
+ALVA. That must be a hellish confusion! (He runs out. Escerny follows
+him. The door remains open. Faint dance-music heard. Pause. Lulu enters
+in a long cloak, and shuts the door to behind her. She wears a
+rose-colored ballet costume with flower garlands. She walks across the
+stage and sits down in the big arm-chair near the mirror. After a pause
+Alva returns.)
+
+ALVA. You had a faint?
+
+LULU. Please lock the door.
+
+ALVA. At least come down to the stage.
+
+LULU. Did you see him?
+
+ALVA. See whom?
+
+LULU. With his bride?
+
+ALVA. With his-- (To Schoen, who enters.) You might have spared yourself
+that jest!
+
+SCHOEN. What's the matter with her? (To Lulu.) How can you play the
+scene straight at me!
+
+LULU. I feel as if I'd been whipped.
+
+SCHOEN. (After bolting the door.) You will dance--as sure as I've taken
+the responsibility for you!
+
+LULU. Before your bride?
+
+SCHOEN. Have you a right to trouble yourself before whom? You've been
+engaged here. You receive your salary ...
+
+LULU. Is that your affair?
+
+SCHOEN. You dance for anyone who buys a ticket. Whom I sit with in my
+box has nothing to do with your business!
+
+ALVA. I wish you'd stayed sitting in your box! (To Lulu.) Tell me,
+please, what I am to do. (A knock at the door.) There is the manager.
+(Calls.) Yes, in a moment! (To Lulu.) You won't compel us to break off
+the performance?
+
+SCHOEN. (To Lulu.) Onto the stage with you!
+
+LULU. Let me have just a moment! I can't now. I'm utterly miserable.
+
+ALVA. The devil take the whole theater crowd!
+
+LULU. Put in the next number. No one will notice if I dance now or in
+five minutes. There's no strength in my feet.
+
+ALVA. But you will dance then?
+
+LULU. As well as I can.
+
+ALVA. As badly as you like. (A knock at the door again.) I'm coming.
+
+LULU. (When Alva is gone.) You are right to show me where my place is.
+You couldn't do it better than by letting me dance the skirt-dance
+before your fiancee.... You do me the greatest service when you point
+out where I belong.
+
+SCHOEN. (Sardonically.) For you with your origin it's incomparable luck
+to still have the chance of entering before respectable people!
+
+LULU. Even when my shamelessness makes them not know where to look.
+
+SCHOEN. Nonsense!--Shamelessness?--Don't make a necessity of virtue!
+Your shamelessness is balanced with gold for you at every step. One
+cries "bravo," another "fie"--it's all the same to you! Can you wish
+for a more brilliant triumph than when a respectable girl can hardly be
+kept in the box? Has your life any other aim? As long as you still have
+a spark of self-respect, you are no perfect dancer. The more terribly
+you make people shudder, the higher you stand in your profession!
+
+LULU. But it is absolutely indifferent to me what they think of me. I
+don't, in the least, want to be any better than I am. I'm content with
+myself.
+
+SCHOEN. (In moral indignation.) That is your true nature. I call that
+straightforward! A corruption!!
+
+LULU. I wouldn't have known that I had a spark of self-respect--
+
+SCHOEN. (Suddenly distrustful.) No harlequinading--
+
+LULU. O Lord--I know very well what I'd have become if you hadn't saved
+me from it.
+
+SCHOEN. Are you then, perhaps, something different to-day?
+
+LULU. God be thanked, no!
+
+SCHOEN. That is right!
+
+LULU. (Laughs.) And how awfully glad I am about it.
+
+SCHOEN. (Spits.) Will you dance now?
+
+LULU. In anything, before anyone!
+
+SCHOEN. Then down to the stage!
+
+LULU. (Begging like a child.) Just a minute more! Please! I can't stand
+up straight yet. They'll ring.
+
+SCHOEN. You have become what you are in spite of everything I sacrificed
+for your education and your welfare.
+
+LULU. Had you overrated your ennobling influence?
+
+SCHOEN. Spare me your witticisms.
+
+LULU. The prince was here.
+
+SCHOEN. Well?
+
+LULU. He takes me with him to Africa.
+
+SCHOEN. Africa?
+
+LULU. Why not? Didn't you make me a dancer just so that someone might
+come and take me away with him?
+
+SCHOEN. But not to Africa, though!
+
+LULU. Then why didn't you let me fall quietly in a faint, and silently
+thank heaven for it?
+
+SCHOEN. Because, more's the pity, I had no reason for believing in your
+faint!
+
+LULU. (Making fun of him.) You couldn't bear it any longer out there?
+
+SCHOEN. Because I had to bring home to you what you are and to whom you
+are not to look up.
+
+LULU. You were afraid, though, that my legs might have been seriously
+injured?
+
+SCHOEN. I know too well you are indestructible.
+
+LULU. So you know that?
+
+SCHOEN. (Bursting out.) Don't look at me so impudently!
+
+LULU. No one is keeping you here.
+
+SCHOEN. I'm going as soon as the bell rings.
+
+LULU. As soon as you have the energy! Where is your energy? You have
+been engaged three years. Why don't you marry? You recognize no
+obstacles. Why do you want to put the blame on me? You ordered me to
+marry Dr. Goll: I forced Dr. Goll to marry me. You ordered me to marry
+the painter: I made the best of a bad bargain. Artists are your
+creatures, princes your proteges. Why don't you marry?
+
+SCHOEN. (Raging.) Do you imagine =you= stand in the way?
+
+LULU. (From here to the end of the act triumphant.) If you knew how
+happy your rage is making me! How proud I am that you should humble me
+by every means in your power! You debase me as deep--as deep as a woman
+can be debased, for you hope you can then jump over me easier. But you
+have suffered unspeakably yourself from everything you just said to me.
+I see it in you. Already you are near the end of your self-command. Go!
+For your innocent fiancee's sake, leave me alone! One minute more, your
+mood will change around and you'll make a scene with me of another
+kind, that you can't answer for now.
+
+SCHOEN. I fear you no longer.
+
+LULU. Me? Fear yourself! I do not need you. I beg you to go! Don't give
+me the blame. You know I don't need to faint to destroy your future.
+You have unlimited confidence in my honorableness. You believe not only
+that I'm an ensnaring daughter of Eve; you believe, too, that I'm a
+very good-natured creature. I am neither the one nor the other. Your
+misfortune is only that you think I am.
+
+SCHOEN. (Desperate.) Leave my thoughts alone! You have two men under the
+sod. Take the prince, dance him into the earth! I am thru with you. I
+know when the angel in you stops off and the devil begins. If I take
+the world as it's made, the Creator must be responsible, not I! To me
+life is not an amusement!
+
+LULU. And, therefore, you make claims on life greater than anyone can
+make. Tell me, who of us two is more full of claims and demands, you or
+I?
+
+SCHOEN. Be silent! I don't know how or what I think. When I hear you, I
+don't think any more. In a week I'll be married. I conjure you, by the
+angel that is in you, during that time come no more to my sight!
+
+LULU. I will lock my doors.
+
+SCHOEN. Go on and boast! God knows since I've been wrestling with the
+world and with life I have cursed no one like you!
+
+LULU. That comes from my lowly origin.
+
+SCHOEN. From your depravity!
+
+LULU. With a thousand pleasures I take the blame on myself! You must
+feel clean now; you must think yourself a model of austerity now, a
+paragon of unflinching principle! Otherwise you could never marry the
+child in her boundless inexperience--
+
+SCHOEN. Do you want me to grab you and--
+
+LULU. Yes! What must I say to make you? Not for the world would I
+change with the innocent kid now! Tho the girl loves you as no woman
+has ever loved you yet!
+
+SCHOEN. Silence, beast! Silence!
+
+LULU. Marry her--and then she'll dance in her childish wretchedness
+before =my= eyes, instead of I before hers!
+
+SCHOEN. (Raising his fists.) God forgive me--
+
+LULU. Strike me! Where is your riding-whip? Strike me on the legs--
+
+SCHOEN. (Grasping his temples.) Away, away! (Rushes to the door,
+recollects himself, turns around.) Can I go before the girl now, this
+way? Home!
+
+LULU. Be a man! Look yourself in the face once:--you have no trace of a
+conscience; you are frightened at no wickedness; in the most
+cold-blooded way you mean to make the girl that loves you unhappy; you
+conquer half the world; you do what you please;--and you know as well
+as I that--
+
+SCHOEN. (Sunk in the chair, right centre, utterly exhausted.) Stop!
+
+LULU. That you are too weak--to tear yourself away from me.
+
+SCHOEN. (Groaning.) Oh! Oh! You make me weep.
+
+LULU. This moment makes =me= I cannot tell you how glad.
+
+SCHOEN. My age! My position!
+
+LULU. He cries like a child--the terrible man of might! Now go so to
+your bride and tell her what kind of a girl I am at heart--not a bit
+jealous!
+
+SCHOEN. (Sobbing.) The child! The innocent child!
+
+LULU. How can the incarnate devil get so weak all of a sudden! But now
+go, please. You are nothing more now to me.
+
+SCHOEN. I cannot go to her.
+
+LULU. Out with you. Come back to me when you have regained your
+strength again.
+
+SCHOEN. Tell me in God's name what I must do.
+
+LULU. (Gets up; her cloak remains on the chair. Shoving aside the
+costumes on the centre table.) Here is writing-paper--
+
+SCHOEN. I can't write....
+
+LULU. (Upright behind him, her arm on the back of his chair.) Write!
+"My dear young lady...."
+
+SCHOEN. (Hesitating.) I call her Adelheid ...
+
+LULU. (With emphasis.) "My dear young lady ..."
+
+SCHOEN. My sentence of death! (He writes.)
+
+LULU. "Take back your promise. I cannot reconcile it with my
+conscience--" (Schoen drops the pen and glances up at her entreatingly.)
+Write conscience!--"to fasten you to my unhappy lot...."
+
+SCHOEN. (Writing.) You are right. You are right.
+
+LULU. "I give you my word that I am unworthy of your love--" (Schoen
+turns round again.) Write love! "These lines are the proof of it. For
+three years I have tried to tear myself loose; I have not the strength.
+I am writing you by the side of the woman that commands me. Forget me.
+Dr. Ludwig Schoen."
+
+SCHOEN. (Groaning.) O God!
+
+LULU. (Half startled.) No, no O God! (With emphasis.) "Dr. Ludwig
+Schoen." Postscript: "Do not attempt to save me."
+
+SCHOEN. (Having written to the end, quite collapses.) Now--comes
+the--execution.
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+ACT IV
+
+
+_A splendid hall in German Renaissance style, with a thick floor of
+oak-blocks. The lower half of the walls of dark carved wood; the upper
+half on both sides hung with faded Gobelins. At rear, a curtained
+gallery from which a monumental stair-case leads, right, half-way down
+the stage. At centre, under the gallery, the entrance-door, with
+twisted posts and pediment. At left, a high and spacious fire-place
+with a Chinese folding screen before it. Further down, left, a French
+window onto a balcony, with heavy curtains, closed. Down right, door
+hung with Genoese velvet. Near it, a broad ottoman, with a chair on its
+left. Behind, near the foot of the stairs, Lulu's Pierrot-picture on a
+decorative stand and in a gold frame made to look antique. In the
+centre of the hall, a heavy square table, with three high-backed
+upholstered chairs round it and a vase of white flowers on it._
+
+_Countess Geschwitz sits on the ottoman, in a soldier-like, fur-trimmed
+waist, high, upright collar, enormous cuff-links, a veil over her face
+and her hands clasped convulsively in her muff. Schoen stands down
+right. Lulu, in a big-flowered morning-dress, her hair in a simple knot
+in a golden circlet, sits in the arm-chair left of the ottoman._
+
+GESCHWITZ. You can't think how glad I shall be to see you at our
+artists' ball. (To Lulu.)
+
+SCHOEN. Is there no sort of possibility of a person like me smuggling
+in?
+
+GESCHWITZ. It would be high treason if any of us lent herself to such
+an intrigue.
+
+SCHOEN. (Crossing to the centre table, behind the ottoman.) The glorious
+flowers!
+
+LULU. Fraeulein von Geschwitz brought me those.
+
+GESCHWITZ. Don't mention it. Oh, you'll be in man's costume, won't you?
+
+LULU. Do you think that becomes me?
+
+GESCHWITZ. You're a dream here. (Signifying the picture.)
+
+LULU. My husband doesn't like it.
+
+GESCHWITZ. Is it by a local man?
+
+LULU. You will hardly have known him.
+
+GESCHWITZ. No longer living?
+
+SCHOEN. (Down left, with a deep voice.) He had enough.
+
+LULU. You're in bad temper. (Schoen controls himself.)
+
+GESCHWITZ. (Getting up.) I must go, Mrs. Schoen. I can't stay any
+longer. This evening we have life-class, and I have still so much to
+get ready for the ball. Good-bye, Dr. Schoen. (Exit, up-stage. Lulu
+accompanies her. Schoen looks around him.)
+
+SCHOEN. Pure Augean stable. That, the end of my life. They ought to show
+me a corner that's still clean. The pest in the house. The poorest
+day-laborer has his tidy nest. Thirty years' work, and this my family
+circle, the circle of my people-- (Glancing round.) God knows who is
+overhearing me again now! (Draws a revolver from his breast pocket.)
+Man is, indeed, uncertain of his life! (The cocked revolver in his
+right hand, he goes left and speaks at the closed window curtains.)
+That, my family circle! The fellow still has courage! Shall I not
+rather shoot =myself= in the head? Against deadly enemies one fights,
+but the-- (Throws up the curtains, but finds no one hidden behind
+them.) The dirt--the dirt.... (Shakes his head and crosses right.)
+Insanity has already conquered my reason, or else--exceptions prove the
+rule! (Hearing Lulu coming he puts the revolver back in his pocket.
+Lulu comes down right.)
+
+LULU. Couldn't you get away for this afternoon?
+
+SCHOEN. Just what did that Countess want?
+
+LULU. I don't know. She wants to paint me.
+
+SCHOEN. Misfortune in human guise, that waits upon one.
+
+LULU. Couldn't you get away, then? I would so like to drive thru the
+grounds with you.
+
+SCHOEN. Just the day when I must be at the exchange. You know that I'm
+not free to-day. All my property is drifting on the waves.
+
+LULU. I'd sooner be dead and buried than let my life be embittered so
+by my property.
+
+SCHOEN. Who takes life lightly does not take death hard.
+
+LULU. As a child I always had the most horrible fear of death.
+
+SCHOEN. That is just why I married you.
+
+LULU. (With her arms round his neck.) You're in bad humor. You give
+yourself too much work. For weeks and months I've seen nothing of you.
+
+SCHOEN. (Stroking her hair.) Your light-heartedness should cheer up my
+old days.
+
+LULU. Indeed, you didn't marry me at all.
+
+SCHOEN. Who else did I marry then?
+
+LULU. I married you!
+
+SCHOEN. How does that alter anything?
+
+LULU. I was always afraid it would alter a great deal.
+
+SCHOEN. It has, indeed, crushed a great deal underfoot.
+
+LULU. But not one thing, praise God!
+
+SCHOEN. Of that I should be covetous.
+
+LULU. Your love for me. (Schoen's face twitches, he signs to her to go
+out in front of him. Both exeunt lower right. Countess Geschwitz
+cautiously opens the rear door, ventures forth, and listens. Hearing
+voices approaching in the gallery above her, she starts suddenly.)
+
+GESCHWITZ. Oh dear, there's somebody-- (Hides behind the fire-screen.)
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Steps out from the curtains onto the stairs, turns back.)
+Has the youngster left his heart behind him in the "Nightlight" cafe?
+
+RODRIGO. (Between the curtains.) He is still too small for the great
+world, and can't walk so far on foot yet. (He disappears.)
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Coming down the stairs.) God be thanked we're home again at
+last! What damned skunk has waxed the stairs again? If I have to have
+my joints set in plaster again before being called home, she can just
+present me between the palms here to her relations as the Venus de'
+Medici. Nothing but steep rocks and stumbling blocks!
+
+RODRIGO. (Comes down the stairs, carrying Hugenberg in his arms.) This
+thing has a royal police-captain for a father and not as much courage
+in his body as the raggedest hobo!
+
+HUGENBERG. If there was nothing more to it than life and death, then
+you'd soon learn to know me!
+
+RODRIGO. Even with his lover's woe, little brother don't weigh more
+than sixty kilos. I'll let myself be hung on that statement any time.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Throw him up to the ceiling and catch him by the feet.
+That'll whip his young blood into the proper rhythm right from the
+start.
+
+HUGENBERG. (Kicking his legs.) Hooray, hooray, I shall be expelled from
+school!
+
+RODRIGO. (Setting him down at the foot of the stairs.) You've never
+been to any sensible school at all yet.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Here many a man has already won his spurs. Only, no
+timidity! First, I'll set before you a drop of what can't be had
+anywhere for money. (Opens a cupboard under the stairs.)
+
+HUGENBERG. Now if she doesn't come dancing in on the instant, I'll
+wallop you two so you'll still rub your tails in the hereafter.
+
+RODRIGO. (Seated left of the table.) The strongest man in the world
+little brother will wallop! Let mamma put long trowsers on you first.
+(Hugenberg sits opposite him.)
+
+HUGENBERG. I'd rather you lent me your mustache.
+
+RODRIGO. Maybe you want her to throw you out of the door straight off?
+
+HUGENBERG. If I only knew now what the devil I was going to say to her!
+
+RODRIGO. That she knows best herself.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Putting two bottles and three glasses on the table.) I
+started in on one of them yesterday. (Fills the glasses.)
+
+RODRIGO. (Guarding Hugenberg's.) Don't give him too much, or we'll both
+have to pay for it.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Supporting himself with both hands on the table-top.) Will
+the gentlemen smoke?
+
+HUGENBERG. (Opening his cigarette case.) Havana-imported!
+
+RODRIGO. (Helping himself.) From papa police-captain?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Sitting.) Everything in the house is mine. You only need to
+ask.
+
+HUGENBERG. I made a poem to her yesterday.
+
+RODRIGO. What did you make to her?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. What did he make to her?
+
+HUGENBERG. A poem.
+
+RODRIGO. (To Schigolch.) A poem.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. He's promised me a dollar if I can spy out where he can meet
+her alone.
+
+HUGENBERG. Just who does live here?
+
+RODRIGO. Here =we= live!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Jour fix--every stock-market day! Our health. (They clink.)
+
+HUGENBERG. Should I read it to her first, maybe?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (To Rodrigo.) What's he mean?
+
+RODRIGO. His poem. He'd like to stretch her out and torture her a
+little first.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Staring at Hugenberg.) His eyes! His eyes!
+
+RODRIGO. His eyes, yes. They've robbed her of sleep for a week.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (To Rodrigo.) You can have yourself pickled.
+
+RODRIGO. We can both have ourselves pickled! Our health, gossip Death!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Clinking with him.) Health, jack-in-the-box! If it's still
+better later on, I'm ready for departure at any moment; but--but--
+(Lulu enters right, in an elegant Parisian ball-dress, much decollete,
+with flowers in breast and hair.)
+
+LULU. But children, children, I expect company!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. But I can tell you what, those things must cost something
+over there! (Hugenberg has risen. Lulu sits on the arm of his chair.)
+
+LULU. You've fallen into pretty company! I expect visitors, children!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. I guess I've got to stick something in there, too. (He
+searches among the flowers on the table.)
+
+LULU. Do I look well?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. What are those you've got there?
+
+LULU. Orchids. (Bending over Hugenberg.) Smell.
+
+RODRIGO. Do you expect Prince Escerny?
+
+LULU. (Shaking her head.) God forbid!
+
+RODRIGO. So somebody else again--!
+
+LULU. The prince has gone traveling.
+
+RODRIGO. To put his kingdom up for auction?
+
+LULU. He's spying out a fresh tribe in the neighborhood of Africa.
+(Rises, hurries up the stairs, and steps into the gallery.)
+
+RODRIGO. (To Schigolch.) He wanted to marry her originally.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. (Sticking a lily in his button-hole.) I, too, wanted to
+marry her originally.
+
+RODRIGO. You wanted to marry her originally?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Didn't you, too, want to marry her originally?
+
+RODRIGO. You bet I wanted to marry her originally!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Who has not wanted to marry her originally!!
+
+RODRIGO. I would never have got a better!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. She has let no one regret that he didn't marry her.
+
+RODRIGO. Then she's not your child?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Never occurs to her.
+
+HUGENBERG. What is her father's name then?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. She has boasted of me!
+
+HUGENBERG. What is her father's name then?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. What's he say?
+
+RODRIGO. What her father's name is.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. She never had one.
+
+LULU. (Comes down from the gallery and sits again on Hugenberg's
+chair-arm.) What have I never had?
+
+ALL THREE. A father.
+
+LULU. Yes, sure--I'm a wonder-child. (To Hugenberg.) How are you
+getting along with your father?
+
+RODRIGO. He smokes a respectable cigar, anyway, the police-captain.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Have you locked up upstairs?
+
+LULU. There is the key.
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Better have left it in the lock.
+
+LULU. Why?
+
+SCHIGOLCH. So no one can unlock it from outside.
+
+RODRIGO. Isn't he at the stock-exchange?
+
+LULU. Oh, yes, but he suffers from persecution-mania.
+
+RODRIGO. I take him by the feet, and yup!--there he stays sticking to
+the roof.
+
+LULU. He hunts you into a mouse-hole with the corner of his eye.
+
+RODRIGO. What does he hunt? Who does he hunt? (Baring his arm.) Just
+look at this biceps!
+
+LULU. Show me. (Goes left.)
+
+RODRIGO. (Hitting himself on the muscle.) Granite. Wrought-iron!
+
+LULU. (Feeling by turns Rodrigo's arm and her own.) If you only didn't
+have such long ears--
+
+FERDINAND. (Entering, rear-centre.) Doctor Schoen!
+
+RODRIGO. The rogue! (Jumps up, starts behind the fire-screen,
+recoils.) God preserve me! (Hides, lower left, behind the curtains.)
+
+SCHIGOLCH. Give me the key! (Takes it and drags himself up the stairs.)
+
+LULU. (Hugenberg having slid under the table.) Show him in!
+
+HUGENBERG. (Under the front edge of the table-cloth, listening; to
+himself.) If he doesn't stay--we'll be alone.
+
+LULU. (Poking him with her toe.) Sh! (Hugenberg disappears. Alva is
+shown in by Ferdinand.)
+
+ALVA. (In evening dress.) Methinks the matinee will take place with
+burning lamps. I've-- (Notices Schigolch painfully climbing the
+stairs.) What the ---- is that?
+
+LULU. An old friend of your father's.
+
+ALVA. Wholly unknown to me.
+
+LULU. They were in the campaign together. He's awfully badly--
+
+ALVA. Is my father here then?
+
+LULU. He drank a glass with him. He had to go to the stock market.
+We'll have lunch before we go, won't we?
+
+ALVA. When does it begin?
+
+LULU. After two. (Alva still follows Schigolch with his eyes.) How do
+you like me? (Schigolch disappears thru the gallery.)
+
+ALVA. Had I not better be silent to you on that point?
+
+LULU. I only mean my appearance.
+
+ALVA. Your dressmaker manifestly knows you better than I may permit
+myself to know you.
+
+LULU. When I saw myself in the glass I could have wished to be a
+man--my man!--
+
+ALVA. You seem to envy your man the joy you offer to him. (Lulu is at
+the right, Alva at the left, of the centre table. He regards her with
+shy satisfaction. Ferdinand enters, rear, covers the table and lays two
+plates, etc., a bottle of Pommery, and hors d' oeuvres.) Have you a
+toothache?
+
+LULU. (Across to Alva.) Don't.
+
+FERDINAND. Doctor Schoen ...?
+
+ALVA. He seems so puckered-up and tearful to-day.
+
+FERDINAND. (Thru his teeth.) One is only a man after all. (Exit.)
+
+LULU. (When both are seated.) What I always think most highly of in you
+is your firmness of character. You're so perfectly sure of yourself.
+Even when you must have been afraid of quarreling with your father
+about it, you always stood up for me like a brother just the same.
+
+ALVA. Let's drop that. It's just my fate-- (Moves to lift up the
+table-cloth in front.)
+
+LULU. (Quickly.) That was me.
+
+ALVA. Impossible! It's just my fate, with the most frivolous ideas
+always to seize on the best.
+
+LULU. You deceive yourself if you make yourself out worse than you are.
+
+ALVA. Why do you flatter me so? It is true that perhaps there is no man
+living, so bad as I--who has brought about so much good.
+
+LULU. In any case you're the only man in the world who's protected me
+without lowering me in my own eyes!
+
+ALVA. Do you think that so easy? (Schoen appears in the gallery
+cautiously parting the hangings between the middle pillars. He starts,
+and whispers, "My own son!") With gifts from God like yours, one turns
+those around one to criminals without ever dreaming of it. I, too, am
+only flesh and blood, and if we hadn't grown up with each other like
+brother and sister--
+
+LULU. That's why, too, I give myself to you alone quite without
+reserve. From you I have nothing to fear.
+
+ALVA. I assure you there are moments when one expects to see one's
+whole inner self cave in. The more self-restraint a man loads onto
+himself, the easier he breaks down. Nothing will save him from that
+except-- (Stops to look under the table.)
+
+LULU. (Quickly.) What are you looking for?
+
+ALVA. I conjure you, let me keep my confession of faith to myself! As
+an inviolable sanctity you were more to me than with all your gifts you
+could be to anyone else in your life!
+
+LULU. How do you come to think on that so entirely differently from
+your father? (Ferdinand enters, rear, changes the plates and serves
+broiled chicken with salad.)
+
+ALVA. (To him.) Are you sick?
+
+LULU. (To Alva.) Let him be!
+
+ALVA. He's trembling as if he had fever.
+
+FERDINAND. I am not yet so used to waiting ...
+
+ALVA. You must have something prescribed for you.
+
+FERDINAND. (Thru his teeth.) I'm a coachman usually-- (Exit.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Whispering from the gallery.) So, he too. (Seats himself behind
+the rail, able to cover himself with the hangings.)
+
+LULU. What sort of moments are those of which you spoke, where one
+expects to see his whole inner self tumble in?
+
+ALVA. I =didn't want= to speak of them. I should not like to lose, in
+joking over a glass of champagne, what has been my highest happiness
+for ten years.
+
+LULU. I have hurt you. I won't begin on that again.
+
+ALVA. Do you promise me that for always?
+
+LULU. My hand on it. (Gives him her hand across the table. Alva takes
+it hesitatingly, grips it in his, and presses it long and ardently to
+his lips.) What are you doing. (Rodrigo sticks his head out from the
+curtains, left. Lulu darts an angry look at him across Alva, and he
+draws back.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Whispering from the gallery.) And there is still another!
+
+ALVA. (Holding the hand.) A soul--that in the hereafter rubs the sleep
+out of its eyes.... Oh, this hand....
+
+LULU. (Innocently.) What do you find in it?...
+
+ALVA. An arm....
+
+LULU. What do you find in it?...
+
+ALVA. A body.....
+
+LULU. (Guilelessly.) What do you find in it?...
+
+ALVA. (Stirred up.) Mignon!
+
+LULU. (Wholly ingenuously.) What do you find in it?...
+
+ALVA. (Passionately.) Mignon! Mignon!
+
+LULU. (Throws herself on the ottoman.) Don't look at me so--for God's
+sake! Let us go before it is too late. You're an infamous wretch!
+
+ALVA. I told you, didn't I, I was the basest villain.
+
+LULU. I see that!
+
+ALVA. I have no sense of honor, no pride....
+
+LULU. You think I am your equal!
+
+ALVA. You?--you are as heavenly high above me as--as the sun is over
+the abyss! (Kneeling.) Destroy me! I beg you, put an end to me! Put an
+end to me!
+
+LULU. Do you =love= me then?
+
+ALVA. I will pay you with everything that was mine!
+
+LULU. Do you love me?
+
+ALVA. Do you love me--Mignon?
+
+LULU. I? Not a soul.
+
+ALVA. I love you. (Hides his face in her lap.)
+
+LULU. (Both hands in his hair.) I poisoned your mother-- (Rodrigo
+sticks his head out from the curtains, left, sees Schoen sitting in the
+gallery and signs to him to watch Lulu and Alva. Schoen points his
+revolver at Rodrigo; Rodrigo signs to him to point it at Alva. Schoen
+cocks the revolver and takes aim. Rodrigo draws back behind the
+curtains. Lulu sees him draw back, sees Schoen sitting in the gallery,
+and gets up.) His father! (Schoen rises, lets the hangings fall before
+him. Alva remains motionless on his knees. Pause.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Holding a paper in his hand, takes Alva by the shoulder.) Alva!
+(Alva gets up as though drunk with sleep.) A revolution has broken out
+in Paris.
+
+ALVA. To Paris ... let me go to Paris--
+
+SCHOEN. In the editors' room they're beating their heads against the
+wall. No one knows what he ought to write. (He unfolds the paper and
+accompanies Alva out, rear. Rodrigo rushes out from the curtains toward
+the stairs.)
+
+LULU. (Barring his way.) You can't get out here.
+
+RODRIGO. Let me through!
+
+LULU. You'll run into his arms.
+
+RODRIGO. He'll shoot me thru the head!
+
+LULU. He's coming.
+
+RODRIGO. (Stumbling back.) Devil, death and demons! (Lifts the
+table-cloth.)
+
+HUGENBERG. No room!
+
+RODRIGO. Damned and done for! (Looks around and hides in the door-way,
+right.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Comes in, centre; locks the door; and goes, revolver in hand,
+to the window down left, of which he throws up the curtains.) Where is
+=he= gone?
+
+LULU. (On the lowest step.) Out.
+
+SCHOEN. Down over the balcony?
+
+LULU. He's an acrobat.
+
+SCHOEN. That could not be foreseen. (Turning against Lulu.) You who drag
+me thru the muck of the streets to a tortured death!
+
+LULU. Why did you not bring me up better?
+
+SCHOEN. You destroying angel! You inexorable fate! To be a murderer
+without drowning in filth; to take me on board like a released convict,
+or hang me up over the morass! You joy of my old age! You hangman's
+noose!
+
+LULU. (In cold blood.) Oh, shut up, and kill me!
+
+SCHOEN. Everything I possess I have made over to you, and asked nothing
+but the respect that every servant pays to my house. Your credit is
+exhausted!
+
+LULU. I can answer for my reckoning still for years. (Coming forward
+from the stairs.) How do you like my new gown?
+
+SCHOEN. Away with you, or my brains will give way to-morrow and my son
+swim in his own blood! You infect me like an incurable pest in which I
+shall groan away the rest of my life. I =will= cure myself! Do you
+understand? (Pressing the revolver on her.) This is your physic. Don't
+break down; don't kneel! You yourself shall apply it. You or I--which
+is the weaker? (Lulu, her strength threatening to desert her, has sunk
+down on the couch. Turning the revolver this way and that.)
+
+LULU. It doesn't go off.
+
+SCHOEN. Do you still remember how I tore you out of the clutches of the
+police?
+
+LULU. You have much confidence--
+
+SCHOEN. Because I'm not afraid of a street-girl? Shall I guide your hand
+for you? Have you no mercy towards yourself? (Lulu points the revolver
+at him.) No false alarms! (Lulu fires a shot into the ceiling. Rodrigo
+springs out of the portieres, up the stairs and away thru the gallery.)
+What was that?
+
+LULU. (Innocently.) Nothing.
+
+SCHOEN. (Lifting the portieres.) What flew out of here?
+
+LULU. You're suffering from persecution-mania.
+
+SCHOEN. Have you got still more men hidden here? (Tearing the revolver
+from her.) Is yet another man calling on you? (Going left.) I'll regale
+your men! (Throws up the window curtains, flings the fire-screen back,
+grabs Countess Geschwitz by the collar and drags her forward.) Did you
+come down the chimney?
+
+GESCHWITZ. (In deadly terror, to Lulu.) Save me from him!
+
+SCHOEN. (Shaking her.) Or are you, too, an acrobat?
+
+GESCHWITZ. (Whimpering.) You hurt me.
+
+SCHOEN. (Shaking her.) Now you will =have= to stay to dinner. (Drags her
+right, shoves her into the next room and locks the door after her.) We
+want no town-criers. (Sits next Lulu and makes her take the revolver
+again.) There's still enough for you in it. Look at me! I cannot assist
+the coachman in my house to decorate my forehead for me. Look at me! I
+pay my coachman. Look at me! Am I doing the coachman a favor when I
+can't stand the stable-stench?
+
+LULU. Have the carriage got ready! Please! We're going to the opera.
+
+SCHOEN. We're going to the devil! Now I am coachman. (Turning the
+revolver in her hand from himself to Lulu's breast.) Think you we let
+ourselves be mistreated as you mistreat me, and hesitate between a
+galley-slave's shame at the end of life and the merit of freeing the
+world of =you=? (Holds her down by the arm.) Come, get through. It will
+be the gladdest remembrance of my life. Pull the trigger!
+
+LULU. You can get a divorce.
+
+SCHOEN. Only that was left! In order that to-morrow the next man may
+find his pastime where I have shuddered from cleft to chasm, suicide
+upon me and =thou= before me! You dare suggest that? That part of my
+life I have poured into you I am to see thrown before wild beasts? Do
+you see your bed with the sacrifice--the victim--on it? The boy is
+homesick for you. Did you let yourself be divorced? You trod him under
+your feet, knocked out his brains, caught up his blood in gold-pieces.
+I let myself be divorced? =Can= one be divorced when two people have
+grown into each other and half the man must go, too? (Reaching for the
+revolver.) Give it here!
+
+LULU. Don't!
+
+SCHOEN. I'll spare you the trouble.
+
+LULU. (Tears herself loose, holding the revolver down; in a determined,
+self-possessed tone.) If men have killed themselves for my sake, that
+doesn't lower my value. You know as well why you made me your wife as I
+knew why I took you for husband. You had deceived your best friends
+with me; you could not well go on deceiving yourself with me. If you
+bring me the close of your life as a sacrifice, still you have had my
+whole youth for it. You understand ten times better than I do which is
+the more valuable. I have never in the world wished to seem to be
+anything different from what I am taken for, and I have never in the
+world been taken for anything different from what I am. You want to
+force me to fire a bullet into my heart. I'm not sixteen any more, but
+to fire a bullet in my heart I am still much too young!
+
+SCHOEN. (Pursuing her.) Down, murderess! Down with you! To your knees,
+murderess! (Crowding her to the foot of the stairs.) Down, and never
+dare to stand again! (Raising his hand. Lulu has sunk to her knees.)
+Pray to God, murderess, that he give you strength. Sue to heaven that
+strength for it may be lent you! (Hugenberg jumps up from under the
+table, knocking a chair aside, and screams "Help!" Schoen whirls toward
+him, turning his back to Lulu who instantly fires five shots into him
+and continues to pull the trigger. Schoen, tottering over, is caught by
+Hugenberg and let down in the chair.)
+
+SCHOEN. And--there--is--one--more--
+
+LULU. (Rushing to Schoen.) All merciful--!
+
+SCHOEN. Out of my sight! Alva!
+
+LULU. (Kneeling.) The one man I loved!
+
+SCHOEN. Harlot! Murderess! Alva! Alva! Water!
+
+LULU. Water; he's thirsty. (Fills a glass with champagne and sets it to
+Schoen's lips. Alva comes thru the gallery, down the stairs.)
+
+ALVA. Father! O God, my father!
+
+LULU. I shot him.
+
+HUGENBERG. She is innocent!
+
+SCHOEN. (To Alva.) You! It miscarried.
+
+ALVA. (Tries to lift him.) You must go to bed; come.
+
+SCHOEN. Don't take me so! I'm drying up. (Lulu comes with the
+champagne-cup; to her.) You are still like yourself. (After drinking.)
+Don't let her escape. (To Alva.) You are the next.
+
+ALVA. (To Hugenberg.) Help me carry him to bed.
+
+SCHOEN. No, no, please, no. Wine, murderess--
+
+ALVA. (To Hugenberg.) Take him up that side. (Pointing right.) Into the
+bed-room. (They lift Schoen upright and lead him right. Lulu stays near
+the table, the glass in her hand.)
+
+SCHOEN. (Groaning.) O God! O God! O God! (Alva finds the door locked,
+turns the key and opens it. Countess Geschwitz steps out. Schoen at the
+sight of her straighten up, stiffly.) The Devil. (He falls backward
+onto the carpet. Lulu throws herself down, takes his head in her lap,
+and kisses him.)
+
+LULU. He has got over it. (Gets up and starts toward the stairs.)
+
+ALVA. Don't stir!
+
+GESCHWITZ. I thought it was you.
+
+LULU. (Throwing herself before Alva.) You can't give me up to the law!
+It is =my= head that is struck off. I shot him because he was about to
+shoot me. I have loved nobody in the world but him! Alva, demand what
+you will, only don't let me fall into the hands of justice. Take pity
+on me. I am still young. I will be true to you as long as I live. I
+will belong only to you. Look at me, Alva. Man, look at me! Look at
+me!! (Knocking on the door outside.)
+
+ALVA. The police. (Goes to open it.)
+
+HUGENBERG. I shall be expelled from school.
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+[ Transcriber's Note:
+The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The first
+line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
+
+forhead.) God in Heaven! The world is strange to me--!
+forehead.) God in Heaven! The world is strange to me--!
+
+SCHIGOLCH. That doesn't help me-- Does he drink?
+SCHIGOLCH. That doesn't help me--Does he drink?
+
+hoping for winter. Perhaps then my (coughing)--my--my asthma will
+hoping for winter. Perhaps then my (coughing) --my--my asthma will
+
+LULU. (Steals toward the door; but Schoen holds her.)--
+LULU. (Steals toward the door; but Schoen holds her.) --
+
+ALVA. Oh, God-- I saw in you something so infinitely far above me. I had
+ALVA. Oh, God--I saw in you something so infinitely far above me. I had
+
+ESCERNY. (Getting up too). What's the matter? (The electric bell goes
+ESCERNY. (Getting up too.) What's the matter? (The electric bell goes
+
+"My dear young lady.. .."
+"My dear young lady...."
+]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit), by Frank Wedekind
+
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