_August 20, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Without exaggeration I can say that I recognise that what has happened was inevitable, and therefore profitable for my soul. I think so at any rate in my better moments. _August 25, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Of myself I may say that I am very well here, even my health, which was affected too by agitation, is far better. I am trying to behave as justly and firmly as possible in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and it seems as though I am more or less successful in my object of calming her.... I am often terribly sorry for her. When one thinks what it must be for her lying awake alone at nights, for she gets no sleep for the greater part of the night, with a confused but painful consciousness that she is not loved, but is burdensome to everyone except the children, one cannot but pity her. _August 28, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Do not think that it is easy for me to advise the manly, serene and even joyful endurance of suffering because I do not myself experience it. Do not think that, because all men are liable to sufferings which may be regarded as objectless torments, or as trials, the mild and religious endurance of which may, strange as it sounds, be transmuted to a greater spiritual blessing. We are all liable to these trials, and often to much harder ones than those which you are enduring. May God who lives in you help you to be conscious of yourself. And when there is that consciousness there is no suffering and there is no death. _August 30, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Sofya Andreyevna went away from here yesterday, and took a very touching farewell of me and Tanya and her husband, with evident sincerity begging forgiveness of all with tears in her eyes. She is inexpressibly pathetic. What will happen later I cannot imagine. "Do what you ought before your conscience and God, and what will be will be," I say to myself and try to act on it. _September 9, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--She was very much irritated, not irritated (_ce n'est pas le mot_, that is not the right word), but _morbidly_ agitated. I underline that word. She is unhappy and cannot control herself. I have only just been talking to her. She came thinking I should go away with her, but I have refused without fixing the date of my going away, and that greatly distressed her. What I shall do later I don't know. I shall try to bear my cross day by day.