very well.... You went away this morning without telling
me. [Examining GAEV.]

LUBOV. How old you've grown, Fiers!

FIERS. I beg your pardon?

LOPAKHIN. She says you've grown very old!

FIERS. I've been alive a long time. They were already getting ready
to marry me before your father was born.... [Laughs] And when the
Emancipation came I was already first valet. Only I didn't agree with
the Emancipation and remained with my people.... [Pause] I remember
everybody was happy, but they didn't know why.

LOPAKHIN. It was very good for them in the old days. At any rate, they
used to beat them.

FIERS. [Not hearing] Rather. The peasants kept their distance from the
masters and the masters kept their distance from the peasants, but now
everything's all anyhow and you can't understand anything.

GAEV. Be quiet, Fiers. I've got to go to town tomorrow. I've been
promised an introduction to a General who may lend me money on a bill.

LOPAKHIN. Nothing will come of it. And you won't pay your interest,
don't you worry.

LUBOV. He's talking rubbish. There's no General at all.

[Enter TROFIMOV, ANYA, and VARYA.]

GAEV. Here they are.

ANYA. Mother's sitting down here.

LUBOV. [Tenderly] Come, come, my dears.... [Embracing ANYA and VARYA] If
you two only knew how much I love you. Sit down next to me, like that.
[All sit down.]

LOPAKHIN. Our eternal student is always with the ladies.

TROFIMOV. That's not your business.

LOPAKHIN. He'll soon be fifty, and he's still a student.

TROFIMOV. Leave off your silly jokes!

LOPAKHIN. Getting angry, eh, silly?

TROFIMOV. Shut up, can't you.

LOPAKHIN. [Laughs] I wonder what you think of me?

TROFIMOV. I think, Ermolai Alexeyevitch, that you're a rich man,
and you'll soon be a millionaire. Just as the wild beast which eats
everything it finds is needed for changes to take place in matter, so
you are needed too.

[All laugh.]

VARYA. Better tell us something about the planets, Peter.

LUBOV ANDREYEVNA. No, let's go on with yesterday's talk!

TROFIMOV. About what?

GAEV. About the proud man.

TROFIMOV. Yesterday we talked for a long time but we didn't come to
anything in the end. There's something mystical about the proud man, in
your sense. Perhaps you are right from your point of view, but if you
take the matter simply, without complicating it, then what pride can
there be, what sense can there be in it, if a man is imperfectly made,
physiologically speakin