The captain is buoyant. They now begin reading provincial correspondence. Here the captain is in his own sphere, as he expresses it. Here it is apparent how shamefully the shopkeeper lives, and how he destroys and disfigures life. Kouvalda's speech thunders round the shopkeeper, and annihilates him. He is listened to with pleasure, for he uses violent words.
"Oh, if I could only write in newspapers!" he exclaims, "I'd show the shopkeeper up in his right colours! I'd show he was only an animal who was temporarily performing the duties of man. I can see through him very well! I know him. He's a coarse fool with no taste for life, who has no notion of patriotism, and understands nothing beyond kopecks!"
"Scraps," knowing the weak side of the captain, and delighting in arousing anger, would interpose—
"Yes, since the gentry are dying out from hunger, there is no one of any account left in the world."
"You are right, you son of a spider and of a frog! Since the gentry have gone under no one is left. There are nothing but shopkeepers, and I hate them!"
"That's easy to see; for have they not trodden you under foot?"
"What's that to me? I came down in the world through my love of life, while the shopkeeper does not understand living. That's just why I hate him so, and not because I am a gentleman. But just take this as said, that I'm no longer a gentleman, but just simply an outcast, the shadow only of my former self. I spit at all and everything, and life for me is like a mistress who has deserted me. That is why I despise it, and am perfectly indifferent towards it."
"All lies!" says "Scraps."
"Am I a liar?" roars Aristide Kouvalda, red with anger.
"Why roar like that?" says Martianoff's bass voice, coolly and gloomily. "What's the use of arguing? Shopkeeper or gentleman, what does it matter to us?"