CHEBUTIKIN. She was a good woman, rest her soul.
IRINA. Mother is buried in Moscow.
OLGA. At the Novo-Devichi Cemetery.
MASHA. Do you know, I’m beginning to forget her face. We’ll be forgotten in just the same way.
VERSHININ. Yes, they’ll forget us. It’s our fate, it can’t be helped. A time will come when everything that seems serious, significant, or very important to us will be forgotten, or considered trivial. [Pause] And the curious thing is that we can’t possibly find out what will come to be regarded as great and important, and what will be feeble, or silly. Didn’t the discoveries of Copernicus, or Columbus, say, seem unnecessary and ludicrous at first, while wasn’t it thought that some rubbish written by a fool, held all the truth? And it may so happen that our present existence, with which we are so satisfied, will in time appear strange, inconvenient, stupid, unclean, perhaps even sinful....
TUZENBACH. Who knows? But on the other hand, they may call our life noble and honour its memory. We’ve abolished torture and capital punishment, we live in security, but how much suffering there is still!
SOLENI. [In a feeble voice] There, there.... The Baron will go without his dinner if you only let him talk philosophy.
TUZENBACH. Vassili Vassilevitch, kindly leave me alone. [Changes his chair] You’re very dull, you know.
SOLENI. [Feebly] There, there, there.
TUZENBACH. [To VERSHININ] The sufferings we see to-day—there are so many of them!—still indicate a certain moral improvement in society.