OLIMPIADA SAMSONOVNA.  Why, daddy, we can’t strip ourselves bare!  We’re none of your common townspeople.

PODKHALYUZIN.  Daddy, please consider:  to-day, without capital, sir, without capital you can’t do much business.

OLIMPIADA SAMSONOVNA.  I lived with you until I was twenty years old, daddy, and was a regular stay-at-home.  What, would you have me give back the money to you, and go about again in calico-print clothes?

BOLSHOV.  What are you saying?  What are you saying?  Recollect!  You see I’m not asking any kindness of you, but my rights.  Are you human beings?

OLIMPIADA SAMSONOVNA.  Why, of course, daddy, we’re human beings; we’re not animals.

BOLSHOV.  Lazar, you just recollect; you see, I’ve given away everything to you, fairly wiped my slate clean; here’s what I’ve got left, you see!  You see, I took you into my house when you were a little rascal, you heartless scoundrel!  I gave you food and drink as if I were your own father, and set you up in the world.  But did I ever see any sort of gratitude in you?  Did I?  Recollect, Lazar, how many times have I noticed that you were light-fingered!  What of it?  I didn’t drive you away as if you were a beast, I didn’t tell on you all over town.  I made you my head clerk; I gave all my property away to you; and to you, Lazar, I gave even my daughter, with my own hand.  If you hadn’t received permission from me, you’d never have dared look at her.

PODKHALYUZIN.  If you please, daddy, I feel all that very keenly, sir.

BOLSHOV.  Yes, you do!  You ought to give everything away as I did, and leave yourself nothing but your shirt, just to rescue your benefactor.  But I don’t ask that, I don’t need to; you simply pay out for me what’s expected now.

PODKHALYUZIN.  And why shouldn’t I pay, sir?  Only they ask a price that’s wholly unreasonable.

BOLSHOV.  But am I asking it?  I begged out of every one of your kopeks I could; I begged, and bowed down to their feet; but what can I do, when they won’t come down one little bit?

OLIMPIADA SAMSONOVNA.  We have told you, daddy, that we can’t pay more than ten kopeks—­and there’s no use saying any more about it.

BOLSHOV.  And so, daughter, you say:  “Go along now, you old devil, you, into the pen!  Yes, into the pen!  Off to prison with him, the old blockhead!  And it serves him right!”—­Don’t chase after great wealth, be contented with what you have.  But if you do chase after wealth, they’ll take away the last you have, and strip you clean.  And it’ll come about that you’ll run out onto the Stone Bridge, and throw yourself into the river Moscow.  And they’ll haul you out by your tongue, and put you in prison. [All are silent; BOLSHOV drinks] But you just think a bit:  what kind of a walk am I going to have to the pen now?  How am I going to shut my eyes?  Now the Ilyinka will seem to me a hundred miles long.