Part 11 (2/2)

Mother: (not having heard) ”What?”

Son: (angrily) ”Thursday!” (quietly) ”I ought to take a bath.”

Mother: ”What?”

Son: (angry and offended) ”Bath!”

N. goes to X. every day, talks to him, and shows real sympathy in his grief; suddenly X. leaves his house, where he was so comfortable. N.

asks X.'s mother why he went away. She answers: ”Because you came to see him every day.”

It was such a romantic wedding, and later--what fools! what babies!

Love. Either it is a remnant of something degenerating, something which once has been immense, or it is a particle of what will in the future develop into something immense; but in the present it is unsatisfying, it gives much less than one expects.

A very intellectual man all his life tells lies about hypnotism, spiritualism--and people believe him; yet he is quite a nice man.

In Act I, X., a respectable man, borrows a hundred roubles from N., and in the course of all four acts he does not pay it back.

A grandmother has six sons and three daughters, and best of all she loves the failure, who drinks and has been in prison.

N., the manager of a factory, rich, with a wife and children, happy, has written ”An investigation into the mineral spring at X.” He was much praised for it and was invited to join the staff of a newspaper; he gave up his post, went to Petersburg, divorced his wife, spent his money--and went to the dogs.

(Looking at a photograph alb.u.m): ”Whose ugly face is that?”

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