MAGELONE--God bless you, sweetheart! You don’t know what you say----Oh, no, I shall look around for a vaudeville engagement, and sing the people my misfortunes with the Jungfrau-stock. Things like that are always applauded. KADIDIA--But you’ve got no voice, Mama! MAGELONE--Ah, yes, that’s true! KADIDIA--Take me with you into vaudeville! MAGELONE--No, it would break my heart!--But, well, if it can’t be otherwise, and you’re so made for it,--I can’t change things!--Yes, we can go to the Olympia together to-morrow! KADIDIA--O Mama, how glad that makes me feel! [_A plain-clothes detective enters, upper left._] DETECTIVE--In the name of the law--I arrest you! CASTI-PIANI--[_Following him, bored._] What sort of nonsense is that? =That= isn’t the right one! CURTAIN ACT III SCENE--_An attic room, without windows, but with two skylights, under one of which stands a bowl filled with rain-water. Down right, a door thru a board partition into a sort of cubicle under the slanting roof. Near it, a wobbly flower-table with a bottle and a smoking oil-lamp on it. Upper right, a worn-out couch. Door centre; near it, a chair without a seat. Down left, below the entrance door, a torn gray mattress. None of the doors can shut tight._ _The rain beats on the roof_. SCHIGOLCH _in a long gray overcoat lies on the mattress_; ALVA _on the couch, wrapped in a plaid whose straps still hang on the wall above him_. SCHIGOLCH--The rain’s drumming for the parade. ALVA--Cheerful weather for her first appearance! I dreamt just now we were dining together at the Olympia. Bianetta was with us there again. The tablecloth was dripping on all four sides with champagne. SCHIGOLCH--Ya, ya. And I was dreaming of a Christmas pudding. [LULU _appears with her rather short hair falling to her shoulders, barefoot, in a torn black dress_.] Where have you been, child? Curling your hair first? ALVA--She only does that to revive old memories. LULU--If one could only get warmed up a little, from one of you! ALVA--Are you going to enter barefoot on your pilgrimage? SCHIGOLCH--The first step always costs all kinds of moaning and groaning. Twenty years ago it was no whit better, and what she has learned since then! The coals only have to be blown. When she’s been at it a week, not ten locomotives will hold her in our miserable attic. ALVA--The bowl is running over. LULU--What shall I do with the water? ALVA--Pour it out the window. [LULU _gets up on the chair and empties the bowl thru the skylight_.] LULU--It looks as if the rain were going to let up at last. SCHIGOLCH--You’re wasting the time when the clerks go home after supper. LULU--Would to God I were lying somewhere where no step would wake me any more! ALVA--Would that I were, too! Why prolong this life? Let’s rather starve to death together this very evening in peace and concord! Aren’t we at the last stage now?