_July 12th._ Yesterday I returned home. On the day of my departure during our walk Sophie Andreevna was talking about the sale of the Samara estate, which she has completed for four hundred and fifty thousand roubles (Tolstoi originally bought the estate cheap), and by the sale of which Andrey, Michael, and Alexandra will get 150,000 roubles each. This money was the topic of conversation during the last few days, and how the sons meant to buy this or some other estate. At the end of the walk Tolstoi and myself found ourselves ahead of the others. Suddenly he gave a heavy sigh. I asked him: “Why do you sigh, Leo Nikolaevich?” “If you knew how painful it is to me to hear it all! I have it always on my conscience that I, with my wish to renounce property, once bought estates. It is funny to think that it seems now as if I had wished to make provision for my children, and in doing so I did them the greatest injury. Look at my Andryusha. He is completely incapable of doing anything, and lives on the people whom I once robbed and whom my children keep on robbing. How terrible it is to listen to all this talk now, to watch it all going on! It is so opposed to my ideas and desires and to everything I live by.... Oh! that they would spare me!...” Tolstoi was silent for a time, and then said: “Why did I suddenly begin complaining?” At that moment Tatyana Lvovna came up, and our conversation turned on other subjects. Tolstoi talked about poetry. “When a poem deals with love, flowers, etc., it is a comparatively innocent occupation until the age of sixteen. But to express in verse an important and serious idea without distorting the idea is almost impossible. How very difficult it is to express one’s thoughts by words only, so that every one understands just what you want to express! How much more difficult, then, it is when the writer is bound by metre and rhyme! Only the very great poets have succeeded in doing it, and rarely too. Perfectly false ideas are often hidden behind verses.” An undergraduate who had written an article upon Tolstoi in reply to Nordau’s criticism came, and turned out to be a foolish young man. Tolstoi had been unwell for the last few days and in a bad temper, so that he came to us quite upset and said: “No, it is time, it is time for me to die! They stick to some single idea, which they arbitrarily choose from the rest, and go on and on repeating: Non-resistance! non-resistance! How am I to blame for it?” Sophie Andreevna said to me: “The private life of famous men is always distorted in their biographies. They are sure to make me out a Xantippe. You must take my side, Alexander Borisovich!” ... During our walk Sophie Andreevna showed me the spot which is called “the apiary,” and said: