Anna Karenina - Part 7

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.

"Clearly I've been napping, and they've overlooked me," Stepan

Arkadyevitch thought about himself. And he began keeping his

eyes and ears open, and towards the end of the winter he had

discovered a very good berth and had formed a plan of attack upon

it, at first from Moscow through aunts, uncles, and friends, and

then, when the matter was well advanced, in the spring, he went

himself to Petersburg. It was one of those snug, lucrative

berths of which there are so many more nowadays than there used

to be, with incomes ranging from one thousand to fifty thousand

roubles. It was the post of secretary of the committee of the

amalgamated agency of the southern railways, and of certain

banking companies. This position, like all such appointments,

called for such immense energy and such varied qualifications,

that it was difficult for them to be found united in any one man.

And since a man combining all the qualifications was not to be

found, it was at least better that the post be filled by an

honest than by a dishonest man. And Stepan Arkadyevitch was not

merely an honest man--unemphatically--in the common acceptation

of the words, he was an honest man--emphatically--in that special

sense which the word has in Moscow, when they talk of an "honest"

politician, an "honest" writer, an "honest" newspaper, an

"honest" institution, an "honest" tendency, meaning not simply

that the man or the institution is not dishonest, but that they

are capable on occasion of taking a line of their own in

opposition to the authorities.