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too hard for you? Only bear with us and do not take yourself from us!
Come, what is it that torments you?
Enter Ványa running.
VÁNYA. Mamma, they are calling you!
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Tell them I can't come. Go, go!
VÁNYA. Do come! [He runs off].
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. You don't wish to see eye to eye--nor to understand
me.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. It is not that I don't wish to, but that I can't.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. No, you don't wish to, and we drift further and
further apart. Only enter into my feelings; put yourself for a moment in
my place, and you will understand. First, the whole life here is
thoroughly depraved. You are vexed with the expression, but I can give
no other name to a life built wholly on robbery; for the money you live
on is taken from the land you have stolen from the peasants. Moreover, I
see that this life is demoralising the children: "Whoso shall cause one
of these little ones to stumble," and I see how they are perishing and
becoming depraved before my very eyes. I cannot bear it when grown-up
men dressed up in swallow-tail coats serve us as if they were slaves.
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