Page 665 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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

664 of 1759