_Nov. 21, Y. P. If I live._ _Nov. 21, Y. P._ I am still thinking and gathering material for _Hadji Murad_. To-day I thought much, read, began to write but stopped at once. Went to Yasenki, took S’s letter.[251] Received nothing. Maria Alexandrovna was here. She is evidently tired, a poor girl and nice.[252] I thought and noted down: 1) I thought about death--how strange it is that one does not want to die, although nothing holds one--and I thought of prisoners who have become so at home in their prisons that they do not want to leave them for freedom and are even afraid to. And so we have become at home in the prison of our life and are afraid of freedom. 2) We have been sent here to do the work of God. In this sense, how good is the parable about the servants who in the absence of their master, squander his fortune away instead of doing his work. 3) When you are angry, when you do not love some one, know that it is not you, but a dream, a nightmare, a most horrible nightmare. As when they stop mowing in order not to spoil the grass, so it is here. One ought to pray. Rozanov discusses Menshikov and makes fun of him.[253] How ... (I have forgotten) made fun of Nicholai, but he remained silent and smiled at me gaily. How touching this always is. _Nov. 22, Y. P. If I live._ _Nov. 22, Y. P._ I saw very clearly in a dream, how Tania fell from a horse, has broken her head, is dying, and I cry over her. _Nov. 24, Y. P._ ... Yesterday and to-day I prepared some chapters to send them off to Maude[254] and to Grot. There have been no letters for a long time either from Maude, or from Chertkov. To-day there was a nice letter from Galia. Exquisite weather; I took a walk far on the Tula road. In the morning I worked seriously revising _Art_. Yesterday I worked on _Hadji Murad_. It seems clear. During this time I thought: 1) What a strange fate: at adolescence--anxieties, passions begin, and you think: I will marry and it will pass. And indeed it did pass with me, and for a long period, 18 years, there was peace. Then there comes the striving to change life and again the set-back. There is struggle, suffering, and at the end, something like a haven and a rest. But yet it wasn’t so. The most difficult has begun and continues and probably will accompany me unto death.... 2) It would be easy to treat erring people mildly, simply, patiently, with compassion, if these people would not argue and would not argue in such a truth-like fashion. One has to answer these arguments somehow or other, and this you cannot stand. 3) Each of us is in such a condition that whether he wants to or does not want to, he has to do something, to work. Every one of us is on the treadmill. The question lies only in this, on which step will you stand? _Nov. 25. Y. P. If I live._ _Nov. 25, Y. P._ ... Corrected _Art_, it is pretty good; wrote a letter to Maude. A good letter from Galia. Have been thinking: