Page:Five Russian plays and one Ukrainian.pdf/80

 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.


 * 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.

(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?


 * Well, in my sweet ignorance I presumed that—I don’t understand, didn’t you get any of my letters?