Friend: You were always a dreamer.
Master: Look! the dream has come true! I live where he lived, in the same apartments, with the same habits. I took these girls — come nearer, Grusha! — these dear girls as slaves, and then there’s Egórich——
Friend: What an extraordinary likeness to Baroness Nordman!
Master: That poor woman died recently.
Friend: Really? How sad! She was a truly advanced woman. The feminist movement lost much by her death. Lord! how fervently she insisted upon equal rights with men!
Master: And how terribly her soul wished to tremble before a man’s strength! Know this — she was a real woman. She sought her ravisher, her oppressor, her master. She was decaying in the atmosphere of equal rights, she was freezing in the embraces of the manikin who nourished her so much and so convincingly with the beauties of free love.
Friend: What are you saying?! Where did you get that from?!
Master: Baroness Nordman, that very Baroness Nordman who was tired of living satiated by the advantages of civilization, who was ready for anything to be saved from mortal ennui — she died, and changed into my slave.
Friend: Into a slave?!! You’re raving!
Master: Grusha, kiss the gentleman’s hand. (Maid takes Friend’s hand, he tears it away.)
Friend: I don’t understand why you’re hoaxing me.
Master (to Maid): Be off! (Exit Maid.) We’re not hoaxing you at all. (Turns to Companion.) She’s my slave, too, but more intimate.
Companion: I am very glad to meet you; I have heard so much of your services to learning.
Friend: Oh, really — thank you——
Master: You think there are few women who are stifled by the burden of their freedom! And so you don’t want to admit that such women, from aversion to your cultured life, from love of the unusual, and from love, of course, of me, are able to become slaves! I’ll show you afterwards the vows they’ve sworn.
Friend: Nothing could surprise me now.
Master: Why should it?
Friend: What?!!
Master (reproachfully): You only just said that nothing could surprise you now. (All laugh.) But do you recognise Egórich? My good old servant? I don’t remember if I told you that he and his wife — she cooks for us here — took up a somewhat original position in regard to a certain reform.
Friend: How?——
Master: They declared that this reform could not affect such faithful servants as they, and despite everything they went on living with us in the old way. (Servant kisses his hand.) He is the right hand of my estate here. And what a hunter — it’s simply amazing! Did you ever hear of hunting with alauntis, bandogs and bercelets?
Friend: Whatever are they?
Master: There you are! (To Servant.) Order your old woman to cook something good for supper; and bring us at once a bottle of mead and a plate of comfits.
Servant: Very good, sir. Shall I lay the table in the dining-room or——
Master: In the dining-room. (Exit Servant.) But why are you standing up, dear old chap. Please sit down.
Friend (sarcastically): I didn’t dare — you’re so majestic. (They sit down.)
Master (joking): Never mind! Be brave, be brave!
Friend: So we’re living now in eighteen hundred and——
Companion: In eighteen hundred and eight.
Master: That is when my great-grandfather was just the age I am now, when he had retired from his regiment and lived, as he said, “in the gentle calm of my country paradise.”
Friend (sarcastically): So you, our matchless economist, the pride of our society, shining, as it were, like a star in the dark night of our social life, you have gone back to the Dark Ages, to the epoch of tyranny, to the time plusquamperfectum only because the life of your great-grandfather has exercised an irresistible influence over you?
Master (seriously): That was one of the reasons. The seed fell on prepared soil. There had always dwelt in me the despot side by side with the liberal.
Friend: And they lived together.
Master: For a certain time.
Friend: That’s interesting.
Master (to his Companion): Tell him the tale, how two dwelled in one soul.
Friend: Whose is this tale?
Master: Mine. She learns my works by heart; she says she is ready to put them to music, to illuminate them in colours, to mould their ideas in clay, to write them out a thousand times in golden ink. (Servant brings in a bottle of mead.) Well, begin!
Companion (at the harp): There, where is so much filth and so much serene divinity, where often the very demon builds a nest and where sometimes the seraphim fly, where is preserved so much secrecy, potentiality, and marvellous power, there, in one of these wondrous abodes built, as they all are, for one, only for one — lived two. One was — (Heavens! how unpleasant to speak of those you hate) — one was good, learned, diligent. The other was — (how I adore him!) — the other was evil, all-evil and unlearned and lazy. They were crowded, of course, but — Fate did not let them live apart. They wanted to develop, but each was a huge hindrance to the other. And the one that passed for learned and good and diligent drugged the other with the potion of science; sat at his bedside and sang this lullaby: “Sleep, dear master: sleep, covering over your eyes! Your glorious age is past! Sleep; the golden age is past! Now we only mock your noble mien. We need learning and work. The polish of the grandee does not tempt us: the fair ladies are ever less and less that count a well-kept above a horny hand.” — So sang he that was learned and closed the beautiful eyelids of him that was unlearned with irresistible sleep. Only he did not reign long, not long did he rule. It is hard to break a master’s strength, real strength, even with a drowsy poison. One! and he suddenly awoke. — Two! he stretched agreeably. — Three! and from laziness he had already forgotten to think. “No” he cried, “it shall not be as you wish! I will hear no more fables, brother! It will be difficult to drug me now. Well, come and let us measure our strength. Enough! We cannot live here together as we used to. Do you hear! You have diverted yourself enough, my beloved.” Thereupon he that was learned produced one thousand five hundred arguments. He that was ignorant overcame them at once by mere force of will: he took his rival by the throat, gave him a trifle with two fingers, cast him out of the doors of the sanctuary and began to live alone, his own master. That’s all the story, but you may think out the moral yourself, if the story pleased you and you fully understood it.
Friend: H’m. — Well — it’s very amusing. (Laughs.) It’s very amusing. The chief contributor to the “Lever” writes stories like this! No, it’s so amusing, so amusing that — ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Master (drinking a beaker of mead): Very glad to have cheered you up. But how nervy you are; you must be working a lot. Why precisely did you come to see me?
Friend: Well, in my sweet ignorance I presumed that — I don’t understand, didn’t you get any of my letters?
Master: I don’t want to have anything in common with the twentieth century. No one dares bring letters to me. That’s my command.
Friend: Wise command! But I wrote to you, and, at the editor’s instructions, have even journeyed here to ask, persuade, entreat you even in God’s name to write just a little article for us. Really, jokes aside, doesn’t your conscience torture you? The editor is simply besieged with letters, “Why doesn’t he write?” — “Is it true that he doesn’t contribute any more?” — “Where are the articles you promised by him?” Listen! Now, really, give up this caprice!