Page 1549 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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 position 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 company director, had seventeen thousand;
Mitin, who had founded a bank, received fifty thousand.

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