Page 1459 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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

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