ALTHOUGH my father had long since renounced the copyright in all his
works written after 1883, and although, after having made all his real
estate over to his children, he had, as a matter of fact, no property
left, still he could not but be aware that his life was far from
corresponding to his principles, and this consciousness perpetually
preyed upon his mind. One has only to read some of his posthumous works
attentively to see that the idea of leaving home and radically altering
his whole way of life had presented itself to him long since and was a
continual temptation to him.
This was the cherished dream that always allured him, but which he did
not think himself justified in putting into practice.
The life of the Christian must be a "reasonable and happy life IN
ALL POSSIBLE CIRCUMSTANCES," he used to say as he struggled with the
temptation to go away, and gave up his own soul for others.
I remember reading in Gusef's memoirs how my father once, in
conversation with Gusoryof, the peasant, who had made up his mind
to leave his home for religious reasons, said, "My life is a hundred
thousand times more loathsome than yours, but yet I cannot leave it."
I shall not enumerate all the letters of abuse and amazement which
my father received from all sides, upbraiding him with luxury, with
inconsistency, and even with torturing his peasants. It is easy to
imagine what an impression they made on him.
He said there was good reason to revile him; he called their abuse "a
bath for the soul," but internally he suffered from the "bath," and saw
no way out of his difficulties. He bore his cross, and it was in this
self-renunciation that his power consisted, though many either could not
or would not understand it. He alone, despite all those about him, knew
that this cross was laid on him not of man, but of God; and while he was
strong, he loved his burden and shared it with none.
Just as thirty years before he had been haunted by the temptation to
suicide, so now he struggled with a new and more powerful temptation,
that of flight.
A few days before he left Yasnaya he called on Marya Alexandrovna
Schmidt at Ovsyanniki and confessed to her that he wanted to go away.
The old lady held up her hands in horror and said:
"Gracious Heavens, Lyoff Nikolaievich, have you come to such a pitch of
weakness?"
When I learned, on October 28, 1910, that my father had left Yasnaya,
the same idea occurred to me, and I even put it into words in a letter I
sent to him at Shamerdino by my sister Sasha.
I did not know at the time about certain circumstances which have since
made a great deal clear to me that was obscure before.
From the moment of my father's death till now I have been racking my
brains to discover what could have given him the impulse to take that
last step. What power could compel him to yield in the struggle in which
he had held firmly and tenaciously for many years? What was the last
drop, the last grain of sand that turned the scales, and sent him forth
to search for a new life on the very edge of the grave?
Could he really have fled from home because the wife that he had lived
with for forty-eight years had developed neurasthenia and at one time
showed certain abnormalities characteristic of that malady? Was that
like the man who so loved his fellows and so well knew the human heart?
Or did he suddenly desire, when he was eighty-three, and weak and
helpless, to realize the idea of a pilgrim's life?
If so, why did he take my sister Sasha and Dr. Makowicki with him?
He could not but know that in their company he would be just as well
provided with all the necessaries of life as he would have been at
Yasnaya Polyana. It would have been the most palpable self-deception.
Knowing my father as I did, I felt that the question of his flight was
not so simple as it seemed to others, and the problem lay long unsolved
before me until it was suddenly made clear by the will that he left
behind him.
I remember how, after N. S. Leskof's death, my father read me his
posthumous instructions with regard to a pauper funeral, with no
speeches at the grave, and so on, and how the idea of writing his own
will then came into his head for the first time.