NASTASYA TIMOFEYEVNA. Andrey, where are those 25 roubles? NUNIN. Is it worth while bothering about such trifles? What does it matter! Everybody’s happy here, and here you go.... [Shouts] The health of the bride and bridegroom! A march! A march! [The band plays a march] The health of the bride and bridegroom! ZMEYUKINA. I’m suffocating! Give me atmosphere! I’m suffocating with you all round me! YATS. [In a transport of delight] My beauty! My beauty! [Uproar.] A GROOMSMAN. [Trying to shout everybody else down] Ladies and gentlemen! On this occasion, if I may say so... Curtain. THE BEAR CHARACTERS ELENA IVANOVNA POPOVA, a landowning little widow, with dimples on her cheeks GRIGORY STEPANOVITCH SMIRNOV, a middle-aged landowner LUKA, Popova’s aged footman [A drawing-room in POPOVA’S house.] [POPOVA is in deep mourning and has her eyes fixed on a photograph. LUKA is haranguing her.] LUKA. It isn’t right, madam.... You’re just destroying yourself. The maid and the cook have gone off fruit picking, every living being is rejoicing, even the cat understands how to enjoy herself and walks about in the yard, catching midges; only you sit in this room all day, as if this was a convent, and don’t take any pleasure. Yes, really! I reckon it’s a whole year that you haven’t left the house! POPOVA. I shall never go out.... Why should I? My life is already at an end. He is in his grave, and I have buried myself between four walls.... We are both dead. LUKA. Well, there you are! Nicolai Mihailovitch is dead, well, it’s the will of God, and may his soul rest in peace.... You’ve mourned him--and quite right. But you can’t go on weeping and wearing mourning for ever. My old woman died too, when her time came. Well? I grieved over her, I wept for a month, and that’s enough for her, but if I’ve got to weep for a whole age, well, the old woman isn’t worth it. [Sighs] You’ve forgotten all your neighbours. You don’t go anywhere, and you see nobody. We live, so to speak, like spiders, and never see the light. The mice have eaten my livery. It isn’t as if there were no good people around, for the district’s full of them. There’s a regiment quartered at Riblov, and the officers are such beauties--you can never gaze your fill at them. And, every Friday, there’s a ball at the camp, and every day the soldier’s band plays.... Eh, my lady! You’re young and beautiful, with roses in your cheek--if you only took a little pleasure. Beauty won’t last long, you know. In ten years’ time you’ll want to be a pea-hen yourself among the officers, but they won’t look at you, it will be too late.