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 fluent, delicate hand a schedule of all his debts, and adding them up found that the total amounted to seventeen thousand rubles, and some odd hundreds, which he let go for the sake of clearness. Counting up his ready-money and his bank-book, he had only eighteen hundred rubles, with no hope of more until the new year. Looking over the schedule of his debts, Vronsky classified them, putting them into three categories: first, the urgent debts, or, in other words, those that required ready money, so that, in case of requisition, there might not be a moment of delay. These amounted to four thousand rubles,—fifteen hundred for his horse, and twenty-five hundred as a guaranty for his young comrade, Venevsky, who had, in Vronsky's company, lost this amount in playing with a sharper. Vronsky, at the time, had wanted to hand over the money, since he had it with him; but Venevsky and Yashvin insisted on paying it, rather than Vronsky, who had not been playing. This was all very well; but Vronsky knew that in this disgraceful affair, in which his only participation was going as Venevsky's guaranty, it was necessary to have these twenty-five hundred rubles ready to throw at the rascal's head, and not to have any words with him. Thus, he had to reckon the category of urgent debts as four thousand rubles.

In the second category were eight thousand rubles of debts, and these were less imperative. These were what he owed on his stable account, for oats and hay, to his English trainer, and other incidentals. At a pinch, two thousand would suffice to leave him perfectly easy in mind. The remaining debts were to his tailor, and other furnishers; and they could wait. In conclusion, he found that he needed, for immediate use, six thousand rubles, and he had only eighteen hundred.

For a man with an income of a hundred thousand rubles,—as people supposed Vronsky to have,—it would seem as if such debts as these could not be very embarrassing; but the fact was that he had not an income of a hundred thousand rubles. The large paternal estate, producing two hundred thousand rubles a year,