VASILÍSA PEREGRÍNOVNA. Ah, benefactress, you see he's still a child; he did it just out of stupidity.
MADAM ULANBÉKOV. No, he needs a good….
VASILÍSA PEREGRÍNOVNA. What do you say, benefactress? He's still a regular booby! What can you expect of him! He'll get wiser, then it will be altogether different.
MADAM ULANBÉKOV. What offends me most is ingratitude! It seems to me he ought to feel what I am doing for him. I'm positively sick. Go for the doctor!
VASILÍSA PEREGRÍNOVNA. Calm yourself, benefactress; as if that rabble were worth your getting upset over!
MADAM ULANBÉKOV. Hand me the smelling-salts.
VASILÍSA PEREGRÍNOVNA. [Hands her them] Snap your fingers at them, that's all. Now, if only those girls….
MADAM ULANBÉKOV. Oh, here's another affliction! Now I certainly can't collect my thoughts; I'm completely distracted, and now she begins on the girls! I shall take to my bed at any moment.
VASILÍSA PEREGRÍNOVNA. Lust, benefactress, is beyond all endurance.
MADAM ULANBÉKOV. No, they needn't expect any mercy from me. As it is, I forgive one, then another, and so the whole crowd is spoiled. [She rings; enter POTÁPYCH] Call Nadezhda, and come here yourself! [POTÁPYCH goes out] That's what it is to be a woman. If I were a man, would they dare be so willful?