t say.

POTAPYCH. Yes, sir. And even if the mistress sees a girl at one of her
acquaintances', she immediately looks up a husband for her. Our mistress
reasons this way: that they are stupid; that if she doesn't look after them
closely now, they'll just waste their life and never amount to anything.
That's the way, sir. Some people, because of their stupidity, hide girls
from the mistress, so that she may never set eyes on them; because if she
does, it's all up with the girls.

LEONID. And so she treats other people's girls the same way?

POTAPYCH. Other people's, too. She extends her care to everybody. She has
such a kind heart that she worries about everybody. She even gets angry if
they do anything without her permission. And the way she looks after her
protegees is just a wonder. She dresses them as if they were her own
daughters. Sometimes she has them eat with her; and she doesn't make them
do any work. "Let everybody look," says the mistress, "and see how my
protegees live; I want every one to envy them," she says.

LEONID. Well, now, that's fine, Potapych.

POTAPYCH. And what a touching little sermon she reads them when they're
married! "You," she says, "have lived with me in wealth and luxury, and
have had nothing to do; now you are marrying a poor man, and will live your
life in poverty, and will work, and will do your duty. And now forget," she
says, "how you lived here, because not for you I did all this; I was merely
diverting myself, but you must never even think of such a life; always
remember your insignificance, and of what station you are." And all this so
feelingly that there are tears in her own eyes.

LEONID. Well, now, that's fine.

POTAPYCH. I don't know how to describe it, sir. Somehow they all get tired
of married life later; they mostly pine away.

LEONID. Why do they pine away, Potapych?

POTAPYCH. Must be they don't like it, if they pine away.

LEONID. That's queer.

POTAPYCH. The husbands mostly turn out ruffians.

LEONID. Is that so?

POTAPYCH. Everybody hopes to get one of our protegees, because the mistress
right away becomes his patroness. Now in the case of these she marries to
government clerks, there's a good living for the husband; because if they
want to drive him out of the court, or have done so, he goes at once to
our mistress with a complaint, and she's a regular bulwark for him; she'll
bother the governor himself. And then the government clerk can get drunk or
an