`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 in Moscow from the Vozdvizhenka to the Ssivtzev-Vrazhek he had to have two powerful horses put into a heavy carriage, to take the carriage a quarter of a versta through the snowy mush 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 livery stable,' 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 on the steps, he called a sleigh, sat down, and drove to the Nikitskaia. On the way he thought no more of money, but mused on the introduction that awaited him to the Peterburg 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 footman 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 the fast of Advent, 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 chetverts of oats, which men would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and threshed 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 chetvert 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, even that 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 Katavassov and the meeting with Metrov which was before him.