well. [Andrey waves
his hand and walks away.]

OLGA. He's got a degree, and plays the violin, and cuts all sorts of
things out of wood, and is really a domestic Admirable Crichton. Don't
go away, Andrey! He's got into a habit of always going away. Come here!

[MASHA and IRINA take his arms and laughingly lead him back.]

MASHA. Come on, come on!

ANDREY. Please leave me alone.

MASHA. You are funny. Alexander Ignateyevitch used to be called the
lovelorn Major, but he never minded.

VERSHININ. Not the least.

MASHA. I'd like to call you the lovelorn fiddler!

IRINA. Or the lovelorn professor!

OLGA. He's in love! little Andrey is in love!

IRINA. [Applauds] Bravo, Bravo! Encore! Little Andrey is in love.

CHEBUTIKIN. [Goes up behind ANDREY and takes him round the waist with
both arms] Nature only brought us into the world that we should love!
[Roars with laughter, then sits down and reads a newspaper which he
takes out of his pocket.]

ANDREY. That's enough, quite enough.... [Wipes his face] I couldn't
sleep all night and now I can't quite find my feet, so to speak. I read
until four o'clock, then tried to sleep, but nothing happened. I thought
about one thing and another, and then it dawned and the sun crawled into
my bedroom. This summer, while I'm here, I want to translate a book from
the English....

VERSHININ. Do you read English?

ANDREY. Yes father, rest his soul, educated us almost violently. It may
seem funny and silly, but it's nevertheless true, that after his death
I began to fill out and get rounder, as if my body had had some great
pressure taken off it. Thanks to father, my sisters and I know French,
German, and English, and Irina knows Italian as well. But we paid dearly
for it all!

MASHA. A knowledge of three languages is an unnecessary luxury in this
town. It isn't even a luxury but a sort of useless extra, like a sixth
finger. We know a lot too much.

VERSHININ. Well, I say! [Laughs] You know a lot too much! I don't think
there can really be a town so dull and stupid as to have no place for
a clever, cultured person. Let us suppose even that among the hundred
thousand inhabitants of this backward and uneducated town, there are
only three persons like yourself. It stands to reason that you won't be
able to conquer that dark mob around you; little by little as you grow
older you will be bound to give way and lose yourselves in this crowd of
a hundred thousand human beings; their li