"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
country) "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 Kouzma.
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 powerful 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,
unproductive 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 devoted to obtaining the money corresponded to
the pleasure given by what was bought with it, was a
consideration he had long ago dismissed. His business
calculation that there was a certain price below which he could
not sell certain grain was forgotten too. The rye, for the price
of which he had so long held out, had been sold for fifty kopecks
a measure cheaper than it had been fetching a month ago. Even
the consideration that with such an expenditure he could not go
on living for a year without debt, that even had no force. Only
one thing was essential: to have money in the bank, without
inquiring where it came from, so as to know that one had the
wherewithal to buy meat for tomorrow. And this condition had
hitherto been fulfilled; he had always had the money in the bank.
But now the money in the bank had gone, and he could not quite
tell where to get the next installment. And this it was which,
at the moment when Kitty had mentioned money, had disturbed him;
but he had no time to think about it. He drove off, thinking of
Katavasov and the meeting with Metrov that was before him.