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THE SAME, SEREBRYAKOV, MARIE VASSILIEVNA, VOYNITSKY, WITH ELENA ANDREYEVNA ON HIS ARM, SONYA AND JULIE

JULIE (kissing SONYA): My dear! Darling!

ORLOVSKY (going to meet them): How do you do, Alexander, how are you, old boy? (Embracing one another.) You are well? Quite well?

SEREBRYAKOV: And how are you, my dear friend? You look fine! I am very glad to see you. How long have you been back?

ORLOVSKY: I returned on Friday. (To MARIE VASSILIEVNA) Marie Vassilievna! How are you, Your Excellency?

(Kissing her hand.)

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: My dear! …

(Kissing him on the head.)

SONYA: Dearest godpa!

ORLOVSKY: Sonechka, my darling! (Kissing her.) My own darling, my little canary bird! …

SONYA: As usual, your face is radiant, kindly, sweet! . .

ORLOVSKY: And you’ve grown taller, and handsomer, and shapelier, my sweet…

SONYA: How are you getting on? Are you well?

ORLOVSKY: Tremendously well!

SONYA: That’s right, godpa! (To FYODOR) I failed to notice the elephant. (They embraced) Sunburnt, hairy … a real spider!

JULIE: Darling!

ORLOVSKY (to SEREBRYAKOV): How are you getting on, old boy?

SEREBRYAKOV: So-so… And you?

ORLOVSKY: What can be the matter with me? I live! I gave my estate to my son, my daughters are married to good men, and now there’s no freer man than myself. I’m enjoying myself!

DYADIN (to SEREBRYAKOV): It pleased Your Excellency to arrive a little late. The temperature of the pie has considerably gone down. Allow me to introduce myself, Ilya Ilyich Dyadin, or Waffle, as some very wittily call me on account o! my pockmarked countenance.

SEREBRYAKOV: Glad to make your acquaintance.

DYADIN: Madame! Mademoiselle! (bowing to ELENA and to SONYA). Here are all my friends, Your Excellency. Once upon a time I had a considerable fortune, but for domestic reasons, or, as people in intellectual centres put it, for reasons for which the editor accepts no responsibility, I had to give up my share to my own brother, who, on a certain unfortunate occasion, found himself short of seventy thousand roubles of Government money. My profession consists in the exploitation of the stormy elements. I make the stormy waves turn the wheels of a flour mill, which I rent from my friend, the Wood Demon.

VOYNITSKY: Waffle, turn the tap off”!

DYADIN: I always bow down with reverence (bowing down to the ground) before the luminaries of science, who adorn our country’s horizon. Forgive me the audacity with which I crave to pay a visit to Your Excellency and to delight my soul in a conversation about the ultimate deductions of science.

SEREBRYAKOV: Pray, do come. I shall be pleased.

SONYA: Do tell us, godpa, where did you spend the winter? Where did you disappear to?

ORLOVSKY: I was in Gmunden, my sweet, I was also in Paris, in Nice; I was in London… .

SONYA: Splendid! What a happy man!

ORLOVSKY: Come with me in the autumn. Won’t you?

SONYA (singing): “Tempt me not without need “…

FYODOR: Don’t sing at lunch, or your husband’s wife will be a silly.

DYADIN: It would be interesting now just to have a glance at this table a vol d’oiseau. What a fascinating bouquet! A combination of grace, beauty, profound learning, popu

FYODOR: What fascinating language! Damn you! You speak as though someone were at work on your back with a plane… . (Laughter.)

ORLOVSKY (to SONYA): And you, my darling, you are not yet married… .

VOYNITSKY: Good heavens, whom could she marry? Humboldt is dead, Edison is in America, Schopenhauer is also dead… The other day I found her diary on her table: this size! I opened it and read: “No, I shall never fall in love… Love is the egotistical attraction of my ego to an object of the opposite sex.” … And I wonder what is not there? Transcendental, culminating point of the integrating principle … ugh! And where have you got to know all this?

SONYA: Whoever else may be ironical, you ought not to be, Uncle George.

VOYNITSKY: Why are you cross?

SONYA: If you say another word, one of us will have to go home. You or I… .

ORLOVSKY (laughing aloud): What a character!

VOYNITSKY: Yes, a character indeed, I must say. … (To SONYA) Give me your little paw! Please do! (Kissing her hand.) Peace and goodwill. … I won’t do it again.