LULU--[_As before._] I’m speaking of your acrobat, of Rodrigo Quast. He’s an athlete: he balances two saddled cavalry horses on his chest. Can a woman desire anything more glorious? He told me just now that he’d jump into the water to-night if you did not take pity on him. GESCHWITZ--I do not envy you your cleverness at torturing the helpless victims sacrificed to you by their inscrutable destiny. I cannot envy you at all. My own misery has not yet wrung from me the pity that I feel for you. _I_ feel free as a god when I think to what creatures =you= are enslaved. LULU--Whom do you mean? GESCHWITZ--Casti-Piani, upon whose forehead the most degenerate baseness is written in letters of fire! LULU--Be silent! I’ll kick you, if you speak ill of =him=. He loves me so uprightly that your most venturous self-sacrifices are beggary in comparison! He gives me such proofs of self-denial as reveal =you= for the first time in all your loathsomeness! You didn’t get finished in your mother’s womb, neither as woman nor as man. You have no human nature like the rest of us. The stuff didn’t go far enough for a man, and for a woman you got too much brain in your noddle. That’s the reason you’re crazy! Turn to Miss Bianetta! She can be had for everything for pay! Press a gold-piece into her hand and she’ll be yours. [_All the company save_ KADIDIA _throng in out of the card-room_.] For the Lord’s sake, what has happened? PUNTSCHU--Nothing whatever! We’re thirsty, that’s all. MAGELONE--Everybody has won. We can’t believe it. BIANETTA--Seems to me I have won quite a fortune! LUDMILLA--Don’t boast of it, my child. That isn’t lucky. MAGELONE--But the bank has won, too! How is that =possible=? ALVA--It is colossal, where all the money comes from! CASTI-PIANI--Let us not ask! Enough that we need not spare the champagne. HEILMANN--I can pay for a supper in a respectable restaurant afterwards, anyway! ALVA--To the buffet, ladies! Come to the buffet! [_All exeunt, lower left._] RODRIGO--[_Holding_ LULU _back_.] Un momong, my heart. Have you read my billet-doux? LULU--Threaten me with discovery as much as you like! I have no more twenty thousands to dispose of. RODRIGO--Don’t lie to me, you punk! You’ve still got forty thousand in Jungfrau-stock. Your so-called spouse has just been bragging of it himself! LULU--Then turn to =him= with your blackmailing! It’s all one to me what he does with his money. RODRIGO--Thank you! With that blockhead I’d need twice twenty-four hours to make him grasp what I was talking about. And then come his explanations, that make one deathly sick; and meanwhile my bride-to-be writes me to call it off, and I can just hang a hurdy-gurdy over my shoulder. LULU--What, have you got engaged here?