ust say straight out how much you want.

CASTI-PIANI. With money you can no longer serve me.

LULU. What makes you think that we have no more money?

CASTI-PIANI. You handed out the last bit of it to me yesterday.

LULU. If you're sure of that then I suppose it's so.

CASTI-PIANI. You're down on the bare ground, you and your writer.

LULU. Then why all the words?--If you want to have me for yourself
you need not first threaten me with execution.

CASTI-PIANI. I know that. But I've told you more than once that you
won't be my downfall. I haven't sucked you dry because you loved me,
but loved you in order to suck you. Bianetta is more to my taste from
top to bottom than you. You set out the choicest sweetmeats, and
after one has frittered his time away at them he finds he's hungrier
than before. You've loved too long, even for our present relations.
With a healthy young man, you only ruin his nervous system. But
you'll fit all the more perfectly in the position I have sought out
for you.

LULU. You're crazy! Have I commissioned you to find a position for
me?

CASTI-PIANI. I told you, though, that I was an appointments-agent.

LULU. You told me you were a police spy.

CASTI-PIANI. One can't live on that alone. I was an
appointments-agent originally, till I blundered over a minister's
daughter I'd got a position for in Valparaiso. The little darling in
her childhood's dreams imagined the life even more intoxicating than
it is, and complained of it to Mama. On that, they nabbed me; but by
reliable demeanor I soon enough won the confidence of the criminal
police and they sent me here on a hundred and fifty marks a month,
because they were tripling our contingent here on account of these
everlasting bomb-explosions. But who can get along on a hundred and
fifty marks a month? My colleagues get women to support them; but, of
course, I found it more convenient to take up my former calling
again; and of the numberless adventuresses of the best families of
the entire world, whom chance brings together here, I have already
forwarded many a young creature hungry for life to the place of her
natural vocation.

LULU. (_Decisively._) I wouldn't do in that business.

CASTI-PIANI. Your views on that question make no difference whatever
to me. The department of justice will pay anyone who delivers the
murderess of Dr. Schoen into the hands of the police a thousand marks.
I only need to whistle for the constable who's standi