the guilty one; I know that I have changed; it was not your doing, nor the world's; it was because I could not do otherwise. I cannot blame you for not having followed me, and I shall always remember with love what you have given me.... Goodbye, my dear Sophie. I love you." "_The fact that I have left you_." He did not leave her. Poor letter! It seemed to him that it was enough to write, and his resolution would be fulfilled. ... Having written, his resolution was already exhausted. "If I had gone away openly there would have been supplications, I should have weakened." ... There was no need of supplications, of discussion; it was enough for him to see, a moment later, those whom he wished to leave; he felt that he _could not, could not_ leave them; and he took the letter in his pocket and buried it among his papers, with this subscription: "Give this, after my death, to my wife Sophie Andreyevna." And this was the end of his plan of departure. Was he not strong enough? Was he not capable of sacrificing his affections to his God? In the Christian annals there is no lack of saints with tougher hearts, who never hesitated to trample fearlessly underfoot both their own affections and those of others. But how could he? He was not of their company; he was weak: he was a man; and it is for that reason that we love him. More than fifteen years earlier, on a page full of heart-breaking wretchedness, he had asked himself: "Well, Leo Tolstoy, are you living according to the principles you profess?" He replied miserably: "I am dying of shame; I am guilty; I am contemptible.... Yet compare my former life with my life of to-day. You will see that I am trying to live according to the laws of God. I have not done the thousandth part of what I ought to do, and I am confused; but I have failed to do it not because I did not wish to do it, but because I could not. ... Blame me, but not the path I am taking. If I know the road to my house, and if I stagger along it like a drunken man, does that show that the road is bad? Show me another, or follow me along the true path, as I am ready to follow you. But do not discourage me, do not rejoice in my distress, do not joyfully cry out: 'Look! He said he was going to the house, and he is falling into the ditch!' No, do not be glad, but help me, support me!... Help me! My heart is torn with despair lest we should all be astray; and when I make every effort to escape you, at each effort, instead of having compassion, point at me with your finger crying, 'Look, he is falling into the ditch with us!'"[23] When death was nearer, he wrote once more: