_July 22, 1909_ (from a diary).--Yesterday I did not eat anything and did not sleep. As usual I felt very wretched. I am wretched now, but my heart is melted. Yes--to love those that do us evil, you say; will try it. I try, but badly. I think more and more of going away and making a settlement about property.... I don't know what I shall do. Help, help, help! This "help" means that I am weak, bad. It is a good thing that I am at any rate conscious of this.... _July 26, 1909_ (from a diary).--After dinner I spoke of Sweden; she became terribly, hysterically irritated. She wanted to poison herself with morphia. I tore it out of her hands and threw it under the stairs. I struggled. But when I went to bed and thought it over calmly I decided not to go. I went and told her. She is pitiful; I am truly sorry for her. But how instructive it is! I did nothing except inwardly work at myself. And as soon as I started on my own self, everything was solved. I have been ill all day.... _August 28, 1909_ (from a diary).--Dreadfully, dreadfully miserable and oppressed; depression partly produced by letter from Berlin, in reference to Sofya Andreyevna's letter and the article in the _Petersburg News_, saying that Tolstoy is a deceiver and a hypocrite. To my shame I did not rejoice at being reviled, but was hurt, and the whole evening was agonisingly depressed. Go away? More and more often the question presents itself. _August 29, 1909_ (from a diary).--Painful feeling and desire (a bad one?) to run away, and uncertainty what is my duty to God. In calm moments, as now, I know that what is necessary above all is to do nothing, to bear all, to remain in love. _September 4, 1909_ (from a diary).--The false judgment of men about me, the necessity for remaining in this position--however hard it all is, I begin at times to understand its beneficial effect on my soul. _November 15, 1909_ (from a diary).--The misery, almost despair, at my idle life in senseless luxury, in the midst of men who are overworked and deprived of the essentials, of the possibility of satisfying their first needs, keeps growing more intense. It is agonising to live like this, and I do not know how to help myself and them. In weak moments I long to die. Help me, O Father, to do Thy will up to the last minute. Meditation about myself which I am learning, and to which I am giving myself up more and more of late, has advanced me much, very much; but, as always, true progress in goodness ... only reveals one's imperfection more and more. _January 8, 1910_ (from the letters).--I live wrongly in wealth, though myself I have nothing, but with those who live in wealth.