had been divided between the two brothers. But when the elder brother, laden with debts, married the Princess Varia Tchirkof, the daughter of a Dekabrist,[1] who brought him no fortune, Alekseï yielded him his share of the inheritance, reserving only an income of twenty-five thousand rubles. He told his brother that this would be sufficient for him until he married, which he thought would never happen. His brother, who was in command of one of the most expensive regiments in the service and only just married, could not refuse this gift.
His mother, who possessed an independent fortune, kept twenty-five thousand rubles for herself and gave her younger son a yearly allowance of twenty thousand rubles; and Alekseï spent the whole of it. Recently the countess, angry with him on account of his departure from Moscow and his disgraceful liaison, had ceased to remit to him any money. So that Vronsky, who was accustomed to living on a forty-five thousand ruble footing, and having this year only twenty-five thousand, found himself in some extremity. He could not apply to his mother to help him out of his difficulty, for her letter which he had received the day before angered him by the insinuations which it contained: she was ready, it said, to help him along in society, or to advance him in his career, but not in this present life which was scandalizing all the best people.
His mother's attempt to bribe him wounded him in the tenderest spot in his heart, and he felt more coldly towards her than ever.
He could not retract his magnanimous promise given to his brother; although he felt now, in view of his rather uncertain relationship with Madame Karenin, that his magnanimous promise had been given too hastily, and that, even though he were not married, the hundred thousand rubles might stand him in good stead. But it was impossible to retract. The impossibility of taking back what he had given was made clear to him, especially when he remembered his brother's wife, when
- ↑ The Dekabrists were the revolutionists of December, 1825, who were banished at the time of the accession of the Emperor Nicholas.
