Catch him, catch him! [Waves his hand.]
POSTMASTER.
Catch him!
How? As if on purpose, I told the overseer to give him the best coach and three. The devil prompted me to give the order.
KOROBKIN'S WIFE.
Here's a pretty mess.
AMMOS.
Confound it, he borrowed three hundred rubles from me.
ARTEMY.
He borrowed three hundred from me, too.
POSTMASTER [sighing].
And from me, too.
BOBCHINSKY.
And sixty-five from me and Piotr Ivanovich.
AMMOS [throwing up his hands in perplexity].
How's that, gentlemen?
Really, how could we have been so off our guard?
GOVERNOR [beating his forehead].
How could I, how could I, old fool?
I've grown childish, stupid mule.
I have been in the service thirty years. Not one merchant, not one contractor has been able to impose on me. I have over-reached one swindler after another. I have caught crooks and sharpers that were ready to rob the whole world.
I have fooled three governor-generals.
As for governor-generals, [with a wave of his hand] it is not even worth talking about them.
ANNA.
But how is it possible, Antosha? He's engaged to Mashenka.
GOVERNOR [in a rage].
Engaged!
Rats! Fiddlesticks! So much for your engagement!
Thrusts her engagement at me now! [In a frenzy.] Here, look at me! Look at me, the whole world, the whole of Christendom.
See what a fool the governor was made of. Out upon him, the fool, the old scoundrel! [Shakes his fist at himself.] Oh, you fat-nose!
To take an icicle, a rag for a personage of rank!
Now his coach bells are jingling all along the road.
He is publishing the story to the whole world.
Not only will you be made a laughing-stock of, but some scribbler, some ink-splasher will put you into a comedy.
There's the horrid sting.
He won't spare either rank or station. And everybody will grin and clap his hands.
What are you laughing at?
You are laughing at yourself, oh you! [Stamps his feet.] I would give it to all those ink-splashers!
You scribblers, damned liberals, devil's brood!
I would tie you all up in a bundle, I would grind you into meal, and give it to the devil. [Shakes his fist and stamps his heel on the floor.
After a brief silence.] I can't come to myself.
It's really true, whom the gods want to punish they first make mad.
In what did that nincompoop resemble an inspector-general?
In nothing, not even half the little finger of an inspector-general. And all of a sudden everybody is going about saying, "Inspector-general, inspector-general."
Who was the first to say it?
Tell me.
ARTEMY [throwing up his hands].
I couldn't tell how it happened if I had to die for it.
It is just as if a mist had clouded our brains. The devil has confounded us.
AMMOS.