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This certificate of honour was obviously intended now to prove

Katerina Ivanovna's right to open a boarding-school; but she had

armed herself with it chiefly with the object of overwhelming

"those two stuck-up draggletails" if they came to the dinner, and

proving incontestably that Katerina Ivanovna was of the most

noble, "she might even say aristocratic family, a colonel's

daughter and was far superior to certain adventuresses who have

been so much to the fore of late." The certificate of honour

immediately passed into the hands of the drunken guests, and

Katerina Ivanovna did not try to retain it, for it actually

contained the statement en toutes lettres, that her father was of

the rank of a major, and also a companion of an order, so that

she really was almost the daughter of a colonel.