Mother, what are you trying to do? Do you want, simply, to be tiresome, to bore me? Eh? Or make the house too disagreeable to stay in? Is that your intention? If so, you're going about it the best way possible.
MRS. FLAMM
I don't care what you say; you're keeping something secret!
FLAMM
[Shrugging his shoulders.] Do you think so?—Well, perhaps I am keeping something from you! Suppose it is so, mother…. You know me…. You know my nature in that respect…. The whole world could turn upside down and not get that much [he snaps his fingers] out of me! As for annoyance … everyone has his share of it in this world! Yesterday I had to dismiss one of the brewers; day before yesterday I had to send a distiller to the devil. And, all in all, apart from such incidents, the kind of life one has to live here is really flat and unprofitable enough to make any decent individual as cross as two sticks.
MRS. FLAMM
Why don't you seek company? Drive in to town!
FLAMM
Oh, yes, to sit in the inn playing at cards with a crowd of Philistines or to be stilted with his honour, the prefect of the county! God forbid! I have enough of that nonsense! It couldn't tempt me out of the house! If it weren't for the bit of hunting a man could do—if one couldn't shoulder one's gun occasionally, one would be tempted to run away to sea.