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. CASTI-PIANI. LULU. You're crazy! Have I commissioned you to find a position for me? LULU. CASTI-PIANI. I told you, though, that I was an appointments-agent. CASTI-PIANI. LULU. You told me you were a police spy. LULU. 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 [Pg 35] 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. CASTI-PIANI. [Pg 35] LULU. (Decisively.) I wouldn't do in that business. LULU. 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. Schön into the hands of the police a thousand marks. I only need to whistle for the constable who's standing down at the corner to have earned a thousand marks. Against that, the House of Oikonomopulos in Cairo bids sixty pounds for you—twelve hundred marks—two hundred more than the Attorney General. And, besides, I am still so far a friend of mankind that I prefer to help my loves to happiness, not plunge them into misfortune. CASTI-PIANI.
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