[8] _By what do Men live?_ (1881); _The Three Old Men_ (1884); _The Godchild_ (1886). [9] This tale bears the sub-title, _Does a Man need much Soil?_ (1886). [10] _The Fire that flames does not go out_ (1885). [11] _The Wax Taper_ (1885); _The Story of Ivan the Idiot._ [12] _The Godson_ (1886). [13] The love of the theatre came to him somewhat late in life. It was a discovery of his, and he made this discovery during the winter of 1869-70. According to his custom, he was at once afire with enthusiasm. "All this winter I have busied myself exclusively with the drama; and, as always happens to men who have never, up to the age of forty, thought about such or such a subject, when they suddenly turn their attention to this neglected subject, it seems to them that they perceive a number of new and wonderful things.... I have read Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, Gogol, and Molière.... I want to read Sophocles and Euripides.... I have kept my bed a long time, being unwell--and when I am unwell a host of comic or dramatic characters begin to struggle for life within me ... and they do it with much success."--Letters to Fet, February 17-21, 1870 (_Further Letters_). [14] A variant of Act iv. [15] The creation of this heart-breaking drama must have been a strain. He writes to Teneromo: "I am well and happy. I have been working all this time at my play. It is finished." (January, 1887. _Further Letters._) [16] A French translation of this Epilogue (_Postface_), by M. Halpérine-Kaminsky was published in the volume _Plaisirs vicieux_, under the title _Des relations entre les sexes._ [17] Let us take notice that Tolstoy was never guilty of the simplicity of believing that the ideal of celibacy and absolute chastity was capable of realisation by humanity as we know it. But according to him an ideal is incapable of realisation by its very definition: it is an appeal to the heroic energies of the soul. "The conception of the Christian ideal, which is the union of all living creatures in brotherly love, is irreconcilable with the conduct of life, which demands a continual effort towards an ideal which is inaccessible, but does not expect that it will ever be attained." [18] At the end of _A Russian Proprietor._ [19] _War and Peace_.--I do not mention _Albert_ (1857), the story of a musician of genius; the book is weak in the extreme. [20] The period spoken of is 1876-77. [21] S. A. Bers, _Memories of Tolstoy._ [22] But he never ceased to love it. One of the friends of his later years was a musician, Goldenreiser, who spent the summer of 1910 near Yasnaya. Almost every day he came to play to Tolstoy during the latter's last illness. (_Journal des Débats,_ November 18, 1910.) [23] Letter of April 21, 1861. [24] _Tolstoï et la musique_ (_Le Gaulois,_ January 4, 1911).