Men go willingly to the scaffold even from a desire to blow their neighbour into the air. Men become cripples for life or are killed for the sake of beating a record with a motor-car or an aeroplane. All this is striking and sensational, but already no one is surprised by it. But it is quite a different matter to spend several decades with such a wife as Sofya Andreyevna without running away from her, and still preserving in his heart pity and love for her, and this to the accompaniment of the unceasing mockery of his enemies and misunderstanding and censure from the majority of his friends--so to live from day to day, from year to year, not seeing and not foreseeing any escape but his own death; to endure, in doing so, all that Leo Nikolaevitch has to endure, being periodically made ill by it and almost dying, and not only to have not the smallest blame or bitterness in his heart, but, on the contrary, to be always blaming himself for lack of patience and love--this really is the highest consistency on the part of Leo Nikolaevitch. This is a testimony of the truthfulness of his theory of life than which nothing stronger and more striking could be imagined. This is just the example that humanity is in need of in our day, and this example Leo Nikolaevitch is giving us in his life. When one looks at the matter from this point of view it becomes so clear as to be obvious why Leo Nikolaevitch had to have just such a wife as was vouchsafed to him. "For a great ship a great journey." He who delivered the message of love in its absolutely unlimited sense needed to have the possibility in his life of proving in action that a love that nothing in the world could destroy was really attainable for man. And in due time, when the truth about Leo Nikolaevitch's life becomes common property, men will be infinitely grateful to him for this joyous confirmation of the possibility of following in practice the godly theory of life of which Tolstoy is the exponent in his writings. FOOTNOTES [5] Ten days before Leo Nikolaevitch went away from Yasnaya Polyana this letter was written by me to Christo Dosev, the common friend of Tolstoy and myself, who migrated to Russia from Bulgaria and died in the year 1919. I quote my letter word for word to preserve its direct character. I ought to mention that a few years after Tolstoy's death Dosev told me that he recognised how mistaken was the censure of Tolstoy to which he had given expression in the letter which called forth this answer from me. [6] This letter was written at the time when, though living only a few versts from Yasnaya Polyana, I was forcibly separated from Leo Nikolaevitch. This separation, which lasted for about three months, was due to the hostile attitude towards me of his wife, whose excited condition he hoped to soothe by the promise not to see me. PART II WHY TOLSTOY WENT AWAY CHAPTER I LIFE AT YASNAYA POLYANA