OSSEP.  No, not another such miserable scoundrel!  I expect every moment to be notified, and have no idea where I can get the money.  Everyone I have asked to help me has refused me.  I can borrow no more on my note, and I cannot sell my goods at half price.  That everyone must understand.  They all show their claws as soon as they find out the position I am in.  Salome is to blame for all this; the 7,000 rubles she promised is the cause of it all.  I would like to know who will pay them to him now.

CHACHO.  You talk nonsense!  You will make your daughter unhappy forever,
Ossep.

OSSEP.  I am still more unhappy myself.  But let us see what the coming day brings forth.  I still have hope of one.  Perhaps he will supply me with money.

CHACHO.  How could you trust the scamp so blindly?  Is such want of thought consistent with reason?

OSSEP.  What is the use of reason in this?  I have always said I could not stand the expense that now everybody assumes.  If a man conducts his business honestly, he makes little profit; and as for a dishonest business, I am not fit for that!  So I have suffered one reverse after another; and where I was most vulnerable I have been hit at last.

CHACHO.  Heavens! what do I hear?  Why don’t I sink into the earth?

OSSEP.  In our line of trade only a few persons carry on their business with their own money.  Most of us have to borrow.  When I sell goods to one, I pay my debt to the other.  I sell goods to the third and pay to the fourth; and so it goes in a circle, like a wheel drawing water, until one falls in the hands of a man who draws the needle out of the knitting and everything falls in pieces.  Who is in a position to fight against such conditions?  One must pay the store rent and the clerk’s salary, and beside that the interest on the working capital.  Then there are the goods that are spoiled or stolen—­and here at home! [Striking the cards.] All this rubbish and more beside! [Striking the table again.] And the women are to blame for all this; if my wife had not promised 7,000 rubles, without my knowledge, the betrothal would not have taken place, and this bad luck would not have come to me.  But where does one find among our women insight and forethought?  For model women give me some foreign countries.  There the women stand by the men in everything:  the wife of a cook is a cook; the wife of a writer, a writer; the wife of a merchant is in every case a merchant.  They earn jointly and spend jointly.  With us the man is here only to make money for them, so that they [striking the table] may kill time with foolish things like this.

CHACHO.  Say, rather, that times are changed; for the men also sit at the club all day and play cards.