SCHIGOLCH. Ya, ya. And I was dreaming of a Christmas pudding. (_Lulu appears, back, barefoot, in a torn black dress, but with her hair falling to her shoulders._) Where have you been? Curling your hair first?
ALVA. She only does that to revive old memories.
LULU. If one could only get warmed, just a little, from one of you!
ALVA. Will you 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. Pour it out the window. (_Lulu gets up on the chair and empties the bowl thru the sky-light._)
LULU. It looks as if the rain would let up at last.
SCHIGOLCH. Your 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 I were, too! Why prolong this life? Let's rather starve to death together this very evening in peace and concord! Is it not the last stage now?
LULU. Why don't *you* go out and get us something to eat? You've never earned a penny in your whole life!
ALVA. In this weather, when no one would kick a dog from his door?
LULU. But me! I, with the little blood I have left in my limbs, I am to stop your mouths!
ALVA. I don't touch a farthing of the money!
SCHIGOLCH. Let her go, just! I long for one more Christmas pudding; then I've had enough.
ALVA. And I long for one more beefsteak and a cigarette; then die! I was just dreaming of a cigarette, such as has never yet been smoked!
SCHIGOLCH. She'll see us put an end to before her eyes, before doing herself a little pleasure.
LULU. The people on the street will sooner leave cloak and coat in my hands than go with me for nothing! If you hadn't sold my clothes, I at least wouldn't need to be afraid of the lamp-light. I'd like to see the woman who could earn anything in the rags I'm wearing on my body!
ALVA. I have left nothing human untried. As long as I had money I spent whole nights making up tables with which one couldn't help winning against the cleverest card-sharps. And yet evening after evening I lost more than if I had shaken out gold by the pailful. Then I offered my services to the courtesans; but they don't take anyone without the stamps of the courts, and they see at the first glance if one's related to the guillotine or not.