NASTASYA TIMOFEYEVNA. [Bowing] Please come in, your excellency! So glad you’ve come!
REVUNOV. Awfully!
ZHIGALOV. We, your excellency, aren’t celebrities, we aren’t important, but quite ordinary, but don’t think on that account that there’s any fraud. We put good people into the best place, we begrudge nothing. Please!
REVUNOV. Awfully glad!
NUNIN. Let me introduce to you, your excellency, the bridegroom, Epaminond Maximovitch Aplombov, with his newly born... I mean his newly married wife! Ivan Mihailovitch Yats, employed on the telegraph! A foreigner of Greek nationality, a confectioner by trade, Harlampi Spiridonovitch Dimba! Osip Lukitch Babelmandebsky! And so on, and so on.... The rest are just trash. Sit down, your excellency!
REVUNOV. Awfully! Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I just want to say two words to Andrey. [Takes NUNIN aside] I say, old man, I’m a little put out.... Why do you call me your excellency? I’m not a general! I don’t rank as the equivalent of a colonel, even.
NUNIN. [Whispers] I know, only, Fyodor Yakovlevitch, be a good man and let us call you your excellency! The family here, you see, is patriarchal; it respects the aged, it likes rank.
REVUNOV. Oh, if it’s like that, very well.... [Goes to the table] Awfully!
NASTASYA TIMOFEYEVNA. Sit down, your excellency! Be so good as to have some of this, your excellency! Only forgive us for not being used to etiquette; we’re plain people!
REVUNOV. [Not hearing] What? Hm... yes. [Pause] Yes.... In the old days everybody used to live simply and was happy. In spite of my rank, I am a man who lives plainly. To-day Andrey comes to me and asks me to come here to the wedding. “How shall I go,” I said, “when I don’t know them? It’s not good manners!” But he says: “They are good, simple, patriarchal people, glad to see anybody.” Well, if that’s the case... why not? Very glad to come. It’s very dull for me at home by myself, and if my presence at a wedding can make anybody happy, then I’m delighted to be here....