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to talk to Stiva. It’s really unbearable. One can’t speak to papa about
it.... But if you and he...”
“Why, what can we do?” said Levin.
“You’ll be at Arseny’s, anyway; talk to him, he will tell what we
decided.”
“Oh, I agree to everything Arseny thinks beforehand. I’ll go and
see him. By the way, if I do go to the concert, I’ll go with Natalia. Well,
good- bye.”
On the steps Levin was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who
had been with him before his marriage, and now looked after their
household in town.
“Beauty” (that was the left shaft-horse brought up from the coun-
try) “has been badly shod and is quite lame,” he said. “What does
your honor wish to be done?”
During the first part of their stay in Moscow, Levin had used his
own horses brought up from the country. He had tried to arrange this
part of their expenses in the best and cheapest way possible; but it
appeared that their own horses came dearer than hired horses, and
they still hired too.
“Send for the veterinary, there may be a bruise.”
“And for Katerina Alexandrovna?” asked Konzma.
Levin was not by now struck as he had been at first by the fact that
to get from one end of Moscow to the other he had to have two power-
ful horses put into a heavy carriage, to take the carriage three miles
through the snowy slush and to keep it standing there four hours,
paying five roubles every time.
Now it seemed quite natural.
“Hire a pair for our carriage from the jobmaster,” said he.
“Yes, sir.”
And so, simply and easily, thanks to the facilities of town life, Levin
settled a question which, in the country, would have called for so much
personal trouble and exertion, and going out onto the steps, he called a
sledge, sat down, and drove to Nikitsky. On the way he thought no
more of money, but mused on the introduction that awaited him to the
Petersburg savant, a writer on sociology, and what he would say to him
about his book.
Only during the first days of his stay in Moscow Levin had been
struck by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country, unpro-
ductive but inevitable, that was expected of him on every side. But by
now he had grown used to it. That had happened to him in this matter
which is said to happen to drunkards—the first glass sticks in the
throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but after the third they’re like
tiny little birds. When Levin had changed his first hundred-rouble
note to pay for liveries for his footmen and hall-porter he could not
help reflecting that these liveries were of no use to anyone—but they
were indubitably necessary, to judge by the amazement of the princess
and Kitty when he suggested that they might do without liveries,—
that these liveries would cost the wages of two laborers for the summer,
that is, would pay for about three hundred working days from Easter to
Ash Wednesday, and each a day of hard work from early morning to
late evening—and that hundred-rouble note did stick in his throat.
But the next note, changed to pay for providing a dinner for their
relations, that cost twenty-eight roubles, though it did excite in Levin
the reflection that twenty-eight roubles meant nine measures of oats,
which men would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and
thrashed and winnowed and sifted and sown,—this next one he parted
with more easily. And now the notes he changed no longer aroused
such reflections, and they flew off like little birds. Whether the labor