GESCHWITZ. You have defrauded me of all the good things of this world that I still possessed. You might at the very least preserve the outward forms of politeness in your intercourse with me. GESCHWITZ. LULU. (As before.) I am as polite to you as to any other woman. I only beg you to be equally so to me. LULU. GESCHWITZ. Have you forgotten the passionate endearments by which, while we lay together in the hospital, you seduced me into letting myself be locked into prison for you? GESCHWITZ. LULU. Well, why else did you bring me down with the cholera beforehand? I swore very different things to myself, even while it was going on, from what I had to promise you! I am shaken with horror at the thought that that should ever become reality! LULU. GESCHWITZ. Then you cheated me consciously, deliberately? GESCHWITZ. LULU. (Gaily.) What have you been cheated of, then? Your physical advantages have found so enthusiastic an admirer here, that I ask myself if I won't have [Pg 41] to give piano lessons once more, to keep alive! No seventeen-year-old child could make a man madder with love than you, a pervert, are making him, poor fellow, by your shrewishness. LULU. [Pg 41] GESCHWITZ. Of whom are you speaking? I don't understand a word. GESCHWITZ. 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. LULU. GESCHWITZ. I do not envy you this cleverness with which you torture the helpless victims sacrificed to you by their inscrutable destiny. My own plight 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.
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