He used to appear
very rarely among his relations because they always fell foul of him.
The poor fellow's sole fault was that he was in the habit of regularly
selling his new clothes. Still, I am doubtful, after all, whether this
can fairly be imputed to him as a fault at all, for although it was
always being dinned into his ears that his family was immensely rich, he
was never blessed with a penny to spend in amusing himself with his
comrades, and therefore had to do the best he could to raise the wind.
Another failing of Koloman's was that he would not learn Latin, and in
consequence thereof he had to suffer many things. Old Lapussa and his
son John indeed had no notion whatever of the Latin tongue. The former
in his youthful days had never gone to school at all, because he was
occupied in building up a business. The latter had not gone to school in
_his_ youth because by that time his people were already rich and he
considered it beneath him. The consequence was that neither father nor
son had a proper idea on the simplest subjects, except what they picked
up on their travels. Still that was no reason why Koloman should not
learn, but as the tutor had his hands full already with little Maksi,
Koloman was obliged to go to the national school in order to become a
wiser man than his forbears.
Poor Henrietta often slaved away for hours at a time with her younger
brother sitting at the table by her side, helping him to struggle
through the genders, declensions, conjugations, or whatever else the
infernal things were called; and the end of it all was that, at last,
she learnt to know Latin better than Koloman, and secretly translated
all his exercises from Cornelius Nepos and the Bucolics of Virgil for
him.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25