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Beaumont found himself at the dinner-table, sitting with only two others, the old man and a very genteel, but somewhat melancholy blondinka, his daughter.
"Did I ever think," said Pólozof at dinner, "that the shares in this factory would ever have such importance for me? It is hard for a man of my years to have such a shock come upon him, but it is good that Kátya cares so little that I have lost her fortune; for, even while I live, it is more her property than mine: her mother had property, and I had little. Of course I made every ruble grow into twenty; it shows that, on the other hand, it grew more from my labor than by inheritance; and how hard I worked! and how much one has to know! " The old man talked long in this self-flattering tone. "And everything was gained by my sweat and blood, but most of all by my brains," he said in conclusion, and he repeated what he said at first: that such a shock was very hard to bear, and that if Kátya too were worried by it, it seemed to him that he would lose his senses; but Kátya not only does not worry, but even consoles him.