(Plaintively.) Without enthusiasm, just as if he had never been young. (He remains silent for a while, and then speaks again with increasing warmth.) Youth to me appears like a bright, glowing flame which heats up to the utmost all human feelings. A young soul should be such a white glowing matter which is hardly restrained by its surroundings. It ought not to cool off until life itself creates a hard mold for it, into which it pours with vehemence and heat. And it does not matter, later on in life, what the form of this once glowing metal is; whether it is a pagan idol or a consecrated bell, as long as it is inherently pure, intact, and without a blemish. (Sighs.) But where is that warm youth of Petr’s?
Maya.—Perhaps he never was different. Perhaps he was born so.
Matoush.—Ach no, no. Don’t you remember what a wild fellow and fighter Petr was in his early days and what a timid, bashful little girl you were. What if Petr’s life just like his studies were delayed in their course? And what if the hot noon of his life has not yet arrived? (After a while.) And it is too late already.
Maya.—Really is it too late?
Matoush.—How should it not be? What could he begin now, even now, when he is not yet consecrated? He is almost twenty-eight. Should he start a new course of studies? Or should he become a starving substitute teacher in a country school or a petty civil official? And would not that be the same thing? Especially for a poor fighter as he is—without ambition.
Maya.—Surely, then, you are worrying yourself for nothing.
Matoush.—Well, we are only talking about it. Every one of your words urges me on to new thoughts. Much that I felt indistinctly became clear to me at that moment when again I knew you. It seems to me now that it is a fatal deception, when it is said that we old ones are entitled to obedience and concessions from the younger generations. Not we—but youth is right. Its demands may be but its own and to us entirely new and strange ones. But even if youth is not logical, it has a far greater claim to life than we who are growing older and more superfluous every day. Youth should desire and demand, because it wants for itself and for the future—and we ought to concede. We ought to concede, no matter how holy or important our aims may be, and youth ought to demand; it ought to have a will, even though it is a spiteful one, youth can even be reckless, at least more so than we. (Plaintively.) Why was not Petr such?
