STYÓPA. Bring another samovár.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [greets the Man-servant, and shakes hands with him[29]] Good-day. [Servant becomes confused. Exit Servant. Nicholas Ivánovich also goes off].
STYÓPA. Poor Afanásy! He was terribly confused. I can't understand papa. It is as if we were guilty of something.
Enter Nicholas Ivánovich.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. I was going back to my room without having told you what I feel. [To Tónya] If what I say should offend you—who are our guest—forgive me, but I cannot help saying it. You, Lisa, say that Tónya plays well. All you here, seven or eight healthy young men and women, have slept till ten o'clock, have eaten and drunk and are still eating; and you play and discuss music: while there, where I have just been, they were all up at three in the morning, and those who pastured the horses at night have not slept at all; and old and young, the sick and the weak, children and nursing-mothers and pregnant women are working to the utmost limits of their strength, so that we here may consume the fruits of their labour. Nor is that all. At this very moment, one of them, the only breadwinner of a family, is being dragged to prison because he has cut down one of a hundred thousand pine-trees that grow in the forest that is called mine. And we here, washed and clothed, having left the slops in our bedrooms to be cleaned up by slaves, eat and drink and discuss Schumann and Chopin and which of them moves us most or best cures our ennui? That is what I was thinking when I passed you, so I have spoken. Consider, is it possible to go on living in this way? [Stands greatly agitated].
LISA. True, quite true!
LYÚBA. If one lets oneself think about it, one can't live.
STYÓPA. Why? I don't see why the fact that people are poor should prevent one talking about Schumann. The one does not exclude the other. If one …
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [angrily] If one has no heart, if one is made of wood …