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it is the one thing necessary and good for the children themselves. You
always say that were it not for the children you would follow me, but I
say that if we had no children we might live as we are doing; we should
then only be injuring ourselves, but now we are injuring them too.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. But what am I to do, if I don't understand?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. And what am I to do? Don't I know why that wretched
man--dressed up in his cassock and wearing that cross--was sent for, and
why Alexándra Ivánovna brought the Notary? You want me to hand the
estate over to you, but I can't. You know that I have loved you all the
twenty years we have lived together. I love you and wish you well, and
therefore cannot sign away the estate to you. If I sign it away at all,
it can only be to give it back to those from whom it has been taken--the
peasants. And I can't let things remain as they are, but must give it to
them. I'm glad the Notary has come; and I will do it.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. No, that is dreadful! Why this cruelty? Though you think
it a sin, still give it to me. [Weeps].
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. You don't know what you are saying. If I give it to
you, I cannot go on living with you; I shall have to go away. I cannot
continue to live under these conditions. I shall not be able to look on
while the life-blood is squeezed out of the peasants and they are
imprisoned, in your name if not in mine. So choose!
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