What Do the Nobility Think of Commoners Who Have Made Their Way in the World?
"These plebeians, who somehow or other force their way up: in all the many I have met, I have found them a remarkably capable and clever lot… Seminarists, petty townsfolk, all this small fry: always able, adroit gentlemen."
"Ah, my dear, all hungry people are clever… You are a nobleman; you never had to win your daily bread by fair means or foul. But this little people must squeeze a kopeck out of everything. And just look how much he eats. We do not, of course, grudge him the food; but… that perpetual appetite betrays the plebeian in him, a man brought up on short commons who has never seen a decent dish… It would do no harm, my dear, to make him a present of some Holland linen, for, only imagine, he wears his shirt-fronts on weekdays. It is most improper!.."
N.G. Pomyalovsky, "Petty-Bourgeois Happiness"
