sense!  If he were a young fellow!  For a young fellow to dress up and all that is all right; but you see he’s nearly sixty, my dear, nearly sixty!  Really!  “Your fashionable up-to-date things,” says I, “change every day; our Russian things have lived from time immemorial!  The old folks weren’t any stupider than we.”  But can you reason with him, my dear, with his violent character?

MITYA.  What is there to say?  He’s a harsh man.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Lyubov is just at the right age now; we ought to be settling her, but he keeps dinning it in:  “There’s no one her equal, no! no!” But there is!  But he says there isn’t.  How hard all this is for a mother’s heart.

MITYA.  Perhaps Gordey Karpych wishes to marry Lyubov Gordeyevna in Moscow.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Who knows what he has in his mind?  He looks like a wild beast, and never says a word, as if I were not a mother.  Yes, truly, I never say anything to him; I don’t dare; all you can do is to speak with some outsider about your grief, and weep, and relieve your heart; that’s all. [Rises] You’ll come, Mitya?

MITYA.  I’ll come, ma’am.

GUSLIN comes in.

SCENE IV

The same and GUSLIN

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Here’s another fine lad!  Come up-stairs to us, Yasha, and sing songs with the girls; you’re good at that; and bring along your guitar.

GUSLIN.  Thank you, ma’am:  I don’t think of that as work; I must say it’s a pleasure.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA.  Well, good-by!  I’m going to take a nap for half an hour.

GUSLIN and MITYA.  Good-by.

PELAGEYA EGOROVNA goes out; MITYA seats himself dejectedly at the table; GUSLIN seats himself on the bed and takes up the guitar.

SCENE V

MITYA and YASHA GUSLIN

GUSLIN.  What a crowd there was at the fair!  Your people were there.  Why weren’t you?

MITYA.  Because I felt so awfully miserable.

GUSLIN.  What’s the matter?  What are you unhappy about?

MITYA.  How can I help being unhappy?  Thoughts like these keep coming into my head:  what sort of man am I in the world?  My mother is old and poor now, and I must keep her—­and how?  My salary is small; I get nothing but abuse and insults from Gordey Karpych; he keeps reproaching me with my poverty, as if I were to blame—­and he doesn’t increase my salary.  I’d look for another place, but where can one find one without friends?  And, yes, I will confess to you that I won’t go to another place.

GOSLIN.  Why won’t you go?  There at the Razlyulyayevs’ it’s very nice—­the people are rich and kind.

MITYA.  No, Yasha, that doesn’t suit me!  I’ll bear anything from Gordey Karpych, I’ll stand poverty, but I won’t go away.  That’s my destiny!