Page:Heartbreak House, Great Catherine, and Playlets of the War.djvu/202

 ld lift you with one hand. Darling, you are a giant, a paladin.

EDSTASTON [complacently]. We wrestle rather well in my part of England.

PATIOMKIN. I have a Turk who is a wrestler: a prisoner of war. You shall wrestle with him for me. I'll stake a million roubles on you.

EDSTASTON [incensed]. Damn you! do you take me for a prize-fighter? How dare you make me such a proposal?

PATIOMKIN [with wounded feeling]. Darling, there is no pleasing you. Don't you like me?

EDSTASTON [mollified]. Well, in a sort of way I do; though I don't know why I should. But my instructions are that I am to see the Empress; and&mdash;

PATIOMKIN. Darling, you shall see the Empress. A glorious woman, the greatest woman in the world. But lemme give you piece 'vice&mdash; pah! still drunk. They water my vinegar. [He shakes himself; clears his throat; and resumes soberly.] If Catherine takes a fancy to you, you may ask for roubles, diamonds, palaces, titles, orders, anything! and you may aspire to everything: field-marshal, admiral, minister, what you please&mdash;except Tsar.

EDSTASTON. I tell you I don't want to ask for anything. Do you suppose I am an adventurer and a beggar?

PATIOMKIN [plaintively]. Why not, darling? I was an adventurer. I was a beggar.

EDSTASTON. Oh, you!

PATIOMKIN. Well: what's wrong with me?

EDSTASTON. You are a Russian. That's different.

PATIOMKIN [effusively]. Darling, I am a man; and you are a man; and Catherine is a woman. Woman reduces us all to the common denominator. [Chuckling.] Again an epigram! [Gravely.] You understand