for him to have
the two thousand five hundred roubles so as to be able to fling
it at the swindler, and have no more words with him. And so for
this first and most important division he must have four thousand
roubles. The second class--eight thousand roubles--consisted
of less important debts. These were principally accounts owing
in connection with his race horses, to the purveyor of oats and
hay, the English saddler, and so on. He would have to pay some
two thousand roubles on these debts too, in order to be quite
free from anxiety. The last class of debts--to shops, to
hotels, to his tailor--were such as need not be considered. So
that he needed at least six thousand roubles for current
expenses, and he only had one thousand eight hundred. For a man
with one hundred thousand roubles of revenue, which was what
everyone fixed as Vronsky's income, such debts, one would
suppose, could hardly be embarrassing; but the fact was that he
was far from having one hundred thousand. His father's immense
property, which alone yielded a yearly income of two hundred
thousand, was left undivided between the brothers. At the time
when the elder brother, with a mass of debts, married Princess
Varya Tchirkova, the daughter of a Decembrist without any fortune
whatever, Alexey had given up to his elder brother almost the
whole income from his father's estate, reserving for himself only
twenty-five thousand a year from it. Alexey had said at the time
to his brother that that sum would be sufficient for him until he
married, which he probably never would do. And his brother, who
was in command of one of the most expensive regiments, and was
only just married, could not decline the gift. His mother, who
had her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every year
twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had
reserved, and Alexey had spent it all. Of late his mother,
incensed with him on account of his love affair and his leaving
Moscow, had given up sending him the money. And in consequence
of this, Vronsky, who had been in the habit of living on the
scale of forty-five thousand a year, having only received twenty
thousand that year, found himself now in difficulties. To get
out of these difficulties, he could not apply to his mother for
money. Her last letter, which he had received the day before,
had particularly exasperated him by the hints in it that she was
quite ready to help him to succeed in the w