talked at
length about their young lady, Anna Sergyevna, who was building a
school and a hospital in the village. When the footman had left the
room, the maidservant pronounced a monologue to the effect that
education is light and ignorance is darkness; then Mme. Murashkin
brought the footman back into the drawing-room and set him uttering
a long monologue concerning his master, the General, who disliked
his daughter's views, intended to marry her to a rich _kammer
junker_, and held that the salvation of the people lay in unadulterated
ignorance. Then, when the servants had left the stage, the young
lady herself appeared and informed the audience that she had not
slept all night, but had been thinking of Valentin Ivanovitch, who
was the son of a poor teacher and assisted his sick father gratuitously.
Valentin had studied all the sciences, but had no faith in friendship
nor in love; he had no object in life and longed for death, and
therefore she, the young lady, must save him.

Pavel Vassilyevitch listened, and thought with yearning anguish of
his sofa. He scanned the lady viciously, felt her masculine tenor
thumping on his eardrums, understood nothing, and thought:

"The devil sent you . . . as though I wanted to listen to your tosh!
It's not my fault you've written a play, is it? My God! what a thick
manuscript! What an infliction!"

Pavel Vassilyevitch glanced at the wall where the portrait of his
wife was hanging and remembered that his wife had asked him to buy
and bring to their summer cottage five yards of tape, a pound of
cheese, and some tooth-powder.

"I hope I've not lost the pattern of that tape," he thought, "where
did I put it? I believe it's in my blue reefer jacket. . . . Those
wretched flies have covered her portrait with spots already, I must
tell Olga to wash the glass. . . . She's reading the twelfth scene,
so we must soon be at the end of the first act. As though inspiration
were possible in this heat and with such a mountain of flesh, too!
Instead of writing plays she'd much better eat cold vinegar hash
and sleep in a cellar. . . ."

"You don't think that monologue's a little too long?" the lady asked
suddenly, raising her eyes.

Pavel Vassilyevitch had not heard the monologue, and said in a voice
as guilty as though not the lady but he had written that monologue:

"No, no, not at all. It's very nice. . . ."

The lady beamed with happiness and continued reading:

ANNA: You are consumed