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NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. And they are all unhappy.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Not at all.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Anyhow, I saw that I was terribly unhappy, and that
I made you and the children unhappy, and I asked myself: "Is it
possible that God created us for this end?" And as soon as I thought of
it, I felt at once that he had not. I asked myself: "What, then, has God
created us for?"
Enter Man-servant.
MARY IVÁNOVNA [Not listening to her husband, turns to Servant] Bring
some boiled cream.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. And in the Gospels I found the answer, that we
certainly should not live for our own sake. That revealed itself to me
very clearly once, when I was pondering over the parable of the
labourers in the vineyard. You know?
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Yes, the labourers.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. That parable seemed to show me more clearly than
anything else where my mistake had been. Like those labourers I had
thought that the vineyard was my own, and that my life was my own, and
everything seemed dreadful; but as soon as I had understood that my life
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