ou're a fool, a donkey!

SAVVA. Children! If you please! Stop that talking! What's the good of
making a noise? Let people go to sleep.

TIHON. Lie down, lie down... be quiet! [Goes behind the counter and
locks the till] It's time to sleep.

FEDYA. It's time! [Lies down] Pleasant dreams, brothers!

MERIK. [Gets up and spreads his short fur and coat the bench] Come on,
lie down, sir.

TIHON. And where will you sleep.

MERIK. Oh, anywhere.... The floor will do.... [Spreads a coat on the
floor] It's all one to me [Puts the axe by him] It would be torture for
him to sleep on the floor. He's used to silk and down....

TIHON. [To BORTSOV] Lie down, your honour! You've looked at that
portrait long enough. [Puts out a candle] Throw it away!

BORTSOV. [Swaying about] Where can I lie down?

TIHON. In the tramp's place! Didn't you hear him giving it up to you?

BORTSOV. [Going up to the vacant place] I'm a bit... drunk... after all
that.... Is this it?... Do I lie down here? Eh?

TIHON. Yes, yes, lie down, don't be afraid. [Stretches himself out on
the counter.]

BORTSOV. [Lying down] I'm... drunk.... Everything's going round....
[Opens the medallion] Haven't you a little candle? [Pause] You're
a queer little woman Masha.... Looking at me out of the frame and
laughing.... [Laughs] I'm drunk! And should you laugh at a man because
he's drunk? You look out, as Schastlivtsev says, and... love the
drunkard.

FEDYA. How the wind howls. It's dreary!

BORTSOV. [Laughs] What a woman.... Why do you keep on going round? I
can't catch you!

MERIK. He's wandering. Looked too long at the portrait. [Laughs] What
a business! Educated people go and invent all sorts of machines and
medicines, but there hasn't yet been a man wise enough to invent a
medicine against the female sex.... They try to cure every sort of
disease, and it never occurs to them that more people die of women
than of disease.... Sly, stingy, cruel, brainless.... The mother-in-law
torments the bride and the bride makes things square by swindling the
husband... and there's no end to it....

TIHON. The women have ruffled his hair for him, and so he's bristly.

MERIK. It isn't only I.... From the beginning of the ages, since the
world has been in existence, people have complained.... It's not for
nothing that in the songs and stories, the devil and the woman are put
side by side.... Not for nothing! It's half true, at any rate... [Pause]
Here's the gentleman pla