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 footmen 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 Ash Wednesday, 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 measures of oats, which men would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and thrashed and winnowed and sifted and sown,--this next one he parted with more easily.