CHACHO.  What are you so ill-humored about?  For the last two days you have been intolerable.

OSSEP.  If I could unbosom myself to you and show you my heart, you would comprehend what the cause of it is.

CHACHO.  God protect you from all evil!

OSSEP.  Am I not right?  Tell me yourself!  This is not the time for card-playing.  Why have they come, then?  If they wished to congratulate us, they could come separately.  How does it happen that they all thought of us at once?  Perhaps each has sent word to the other that Salome has betrothed her daughter and they have all taken advantage of the opportunity to come.  Of course only for the sake of those damned cards!  This one or that one has probably been invited by her [pointing to Salome].  She sent word to them, “Come to us, I pray!  X and Z are already here.” [To Salome:] Say, isn’t that so?

SALOME.  What nonsense he talks!  Ought they not to know at your uncle’s house that we have betrothed our daughter?  I was obliged to give them some information about it, was I not?

OSSEP.  And to whom beside?

SALOME.  Whom else?  Your cousins.  And I have just sent for your sister-in-law.

OSSEP [anxiously].  For what purpose?  She could have come another time just as well.

SALOME.  How useless it is to talk so!  You understand nothing at all about the matter.  Your relatives would take offence in every possible way if I did not invite them.  They would not speak to me for a year!

OSSEP.  Great heaven!  I wish they were struck blind! [Sits down and pulls at the end of the table-cloth.] I would take pleasure in throwing them all out!

SALOME.  I have no time to dispute with you.
                    [Exit at left, angry.

OSSEP.  Great heaven! have women been created only to bleed the men?

CHACHO.  Don’t excite yourself so, dear Ossep.  What you say is in every way pure facts.  But you must overlook something now and then.  It can’t be helped now; they are all here; you cannot chase them out of the house.  The whole city would be stirred up about it.

OSSEP.  And what will people say when to-morrow or the day after my creditors come and chase me out of my house?

CHACHO.  Oh, don’t talk about such things!

OSSEP [sitting down at the card-table].  That’s easily said.  But let me tell you, I feel as though the house was going to fall down on top of me.

CHACHO.  What has happened, Ossep?

OSSEP.  They say Barssegh Leproink has brought action against me.

CHACHO.  What?  Brought action against you?

OSSEP.  I owe him money, and on that account he holds the knife at my throat.

CHACHO.  God bless me!

OSSEP.  The wicked fellow has my note, and another security beside, and yet he will not wait.

CHACHO.  His match for wickedness cannot be found in the whole world.