Fat Lady (pointing to SIMON). Mais il est très [bien!] [11]
Anna Pávlovna. Yes, as a butler's assistant, but hardly....
Sahátof. Wives never have any faith in their husbands' work. You don't believe in anything of this kind?
Anna Pávlovna. Of course not. Kaptchítch, it is true, has something exceptional about him, but Heaven knows what all this is about!
Fat Lady. No, Anna Pávlovna, permit me, you can't decide it in such a way. Before I was married, I once had a remarkable dream. Dreams, you know, are often such that you don't know where they begin and where they end; it was just such a dream that I....
[Enter VASÍLY LEONÍDITCH and PETRÍSTCHEF.
Fat Lady. And much was revealed to me by that dream. Nowadays the young people (points to PETRÍSTCHEF and VASÍLY LEONÍDITCH) deny everything.
Vasíly Leoníditch. But look here, you know—now I, for instance, never deny anything! Eh, what?
[BETSY and MÁRYA KONSTANTÍNOVNA enter, and begin talking to PETRÍSTCHEF.
Fat Lady. And how can one deny the supernatural? They say it is unreasonable. But what if one's reason is stupid; what then? There now, on Garden Street, you know ... why, well, it appeared every evening! My husband's brother—what do you call him? Not beau-frère—what's the other name for it?—I never can remember the names of these different relationships—well, he went there three nights running, and still he saw nothing; so I said to him....