Strona 883 z 1294

Possibly Katerina Ivanovna felt obliged to honour the memory of

the deceased "suitably," that all the lodgers, and still more

Amalia Ivanovna, might know "that he was in no way their

inferior, and perhaps very much their superior," and that no one

had the right "to turn up his nose at him." Perhaps the chief

element was that peculiar "poor man's pride," which compels many

poor people to spend their last savings on some traditional

social ceremony, simply in order to do "like other people," and

not to "be looked down upon." It is very probable, too, that

Katerina Ivanovna longed on this occasion, at the moment when she

seemed to be abandoned by everyone, to show those "wretched

contemptible lodgers" that she knew "how to do things, how to

entertain" and that she had been brought up "in a genteel, she

might almost say aristocratic colonel's family" and had not been

meant for sweeping floors and washing the children's rags at

night.