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Chapter 17.
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s affairs were in a very bad way.
The money for two-thirds of the forest had all been spent already,
and he had borrowed from the merchant in advance at ten per cent
discount, almost all the remaining third. The merchant would not give
more, especially as Darya Alexandrovna, for the first time that winter
insisting on her right to her own property, had refused to sign the
receipt for the payment of the last third of the forest. All his salary
went on household expenses and in payment of petty debts that could
not be put off. There was positively no money.
This was unpleasant and awkward, and in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s
opinion things could not go on like this. The explanation of the posi-
tion was, in his view, to be found in the fact that his salary was too small.
The post he filled had been unmistakably very good five years ago, but
it was so no longer.
Petrov, the bank director, had twelve thousand; Sventitsky, a com-
pany director, had seventeen thousand; Mitin, who had founded a
bank, received fifty thousand.
“Clearly I’ve been napping, and they’ve overlooked me,” Stepan
Arkadyevitch thought about himself. And he began keeping his eyes
and ears open, and towards the end of the winter he had discovered a
very good berth and had formed a plan of attack upon it, at first from
Moscow through aunts, uncles, and friends, and then, when the matter
was well advanced, in the spring, he went himself to Petersburg. It was
one of those snug, lucrative berths of which there are so many more
nowadays than there used to be, with incomes ranging from one thou-
sand to fifty thousand roubles. It was the post of secretary of the
committee of the amalgamated agency of the southern railways, and of
certain banking companies. This position, like all such appointments,
called for such immense energy and such varied qualifications, that it
was difficult for them to be found united in any one man. And since a
man combining all the qualifications was not to be found, it was at least
better that the post be filled by an honest than by a dishonest man.
And Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely an honest man—
unemphatically—in the common acceptation of the words, he was an
honest man—emphatically—in that special sense which the word has
in Moscow, when they talk of an “honest” politician, an “honest” writer,
an “honest” newspaper, an “honest” institution, an “honest” tendency,
meaning not simply that the man or the institution is not dishonest,
but that they are capable on occasion of taking a line of their own in
opposition to the authorities.
Stepan Arkadyevitch moved in those circles in Moscow in which
that expression had come into use, was regarded there as an honest
man, and so had more right to this appointment than others.
The appointment yielded an income of from seven to ten thou-
sand a year, and Oblonsky could fill it without giving up his govern-
ment position. It was in the hands of two ministers, one lady, and two
Jews, and all these people, though the way had been paved already
with them, Stepan Arkadyevitch had to see in Petersburg. Besides this
business, Stepan Arkadyevitch had promised his sister Anna to obtain
from Karenin a definite answer on the question of divorce. And beg-