A retired clerk of the commissariat department came, too; he was
drunk, had a loud and most unseemly laugh and only fancy--was without
a waistcoat! One of the visitors sat straight down to the table without
even greeting Katerina Ivanovna. Finally one person having no suit
appeared in his dressing-gown, but this was too much, and the efforts of
Amalia Ivanovna and the Pole succeeded in removing him. The Pole brought
with him, however, two other Poles who did not live at Amalia Ivanovna's
and whom no one had seen here before. All this irritated Katerina
Ivanovna intensely. "For whom had they made all these preparations
then?" To make room for the visitors the children had not even been laid
for at the table; but the two little ones were sitting on a bench in the
furthest corner with their dinner laid on a box, while Polenka as a big
girl had to look after them, feed them, and keep their noses wiped like
well-bred children's.

Katerina Ivanovna, in fact, could hardly help meeting her guests with
increased dignity, and even haughtiness. She stared at some of them with
special severity, and loftily invited them to take their seats. Rushing
to the conclusion that Amalia Ivanovna must be responsible for those who
were absent, she began treating her with extreme nonchalance, which the
latter promptly observed and resented. Such a beginning was no good omen
for the end. All were seated at last.

Raskolnikov came in almost at the moment of their return from the
cemetery. Katerina Ivanovna was greatly delighted to see him, in the
first place, because he was the one "educated visitor, and, as everyone
knew, was in two years to take a professorship in the university," and
secondly because he immediately and respectfully apologised for having
been unable to be at the funeral. She positively pounced upon him, and
made him sit on her left hand (Amalia Ivanovna was on her right). In
spite of her continual anxiety that the dishes should be passed round
correctly and that everyone should taste them, in spite of the agonising
cough which interrupted her every minute and seemed to have grown worse
during the last few days, she hastened to pour out in a half whisper to
Raskolnikov all her suppressed feelings and her just indignation at
the failure of the dinner, interspersing her remarks with lively and
uncontrollable laughter at the expense of her visitors and especially of
her landlady.

"It's all that cuckoo's fault! You know whom