oes one not visit a
mother with a young baby and stay whole months with them? Why does one
invite 100 persons to a wedding and give funeral feasts and let eighty
women mourners come and howl like so many dervishes? And what is that
yonder [_points to the furniture_]? That one is old-fashioned and the
others new-fashioned. If we can have one kind, why do we use the
other? [_Silent awhile_.

SALOME. Well, well! don't be angry! So you will give 6,000 rubles--you
have promised it. What is lacking I will procure.

OSSEP. You will procure it? Where, then, will you get it? Not some of
your own dowry, I hope.

SALOME. I had no dowry. Why do you tease me with that? No, everything I
have I will sell or pawn. The pearls, my gold ornaments, I will take off
of my _katiba_. The gold buttons can be melted. My brooch and my
necklace, with twelve strings of pearls, I will also sell; and, if it is
necessary, even the gold pins from my velvet cap must go. Let it all go!
I will sacrifice everything for my Nato. I would give my head to keep
the young man from slipping through my hands.
[_Exit hastily at left_.

SCENE VI

_Ossep. Chacho_.

OSSEP. Have you ever seen anything like it, aunt? I ask you, aunt, does
that seem right?

CHACHO. My son, who takes a thing like that to heart?

OSSEP. She is obstinate as a mule. Say, does she not deserve to be
soundly beaten, now?

CHACHO. It only needed this--that you should say such a thing! As many
years as you have lived together you have never harmed a hair of her
head; then all of a sudden you begin to talk like this. Is that
generous?

OSSEP. O aunt! I have had enough of it all. Were another man in my
place, he would have had a separation long ago. [_Sits down_.] If she
sees on anyone a new dress that pleases her, I must buy one like it for
her; if a thing pleases her anywhere in a house, she wants one in her
house; and if I don't get it for her she loses her senses. It is, for
all the world, as though she belonged to the monkey tribe. Can a man
endure it any longer?

CHACHO. The women are all so, my son. Why do you fret yourself so much
on that account?

OSSEP. Yes, yes; you have the habit of making out that all women are
alike--all! all! If other people break their heads against a stone,
shall I do the same? No; I do what pleases myself, and not what pleases
others.

CHACHO. Ossep, what nonsense are you talking? As I was coming here,
even, I saw a