This will break her heart. She has made an angel of you. The lamp is always burning.... Sasha (going to the eikon corner with a glass of vodka in his hand). Aha! Alexander Nevski, my patron saint. I drink to you, my friend: but I cannot congratulate you on your work. As a guardian angel you have been something of a failure. And what is this? (taking a photograph). Myself! Who would have known this for my portrait? Look at the angel child, with the soft cheeks and the pretty curly hair. How innocent and good I looked! (bringing it down). And even then I was deceiving my mother. She never understood that a young man must live, he must live. We are animals first; we have instincts that need something warmer, something livelier, than the tame dull round of home. (He throws down the photograph; Fomá replaces it.) And even now I have no intention of dying. Yet how am I to live? I cannot work; the mines have sucked out all my strength. Has my mother any money? Ast. (to Fomá). What can we do with him? (Sasha: Has my mother any money?) Money? Of course not. Would she let lodgings if she had? Listen. I am a poor man myself, but I will give you ten roubles and your railway fare to go to St. Petersburg.

Ast Monologue from The Little Stone House

Rehearse Ast's monologue