In the summer of 1884 Leo Nikolaevich worked a great deal on the land;
for whole days he mowed with the peasants, and when tired out he came
home in the evenings, he used to sit gloomy and discontented with the
life lived by the family. That life was in discordance with his
teaching, and this tormented and pained him. At one time he thought of
taking a Russian peasant woman, a worker on the land, and of secretly
going away with the peasants to start a new life; he confessed this to
me himself. At last, on 17 June, after a little quarrel with me about
the horses, he took a sack with a few things on his shoulder and left
the house, saying that he was going away for ever, perhaps to America,
and that he would never come back. At the time I was beginning to feel
the pains of childbirth. My husband's behaviour drove me to despair,
and the two pains, of the body and of the heart, were unendurable. I
prayed to God for death. At four o'clock in the morning Leo Nikolaevich
came back, and, without coming to me, lay down on the couch downstairs
in his study. In spite of my cruel pains I ran down to him; he was
gloomy and said nothing to me. At seven o'clock that morning our
daughter Alexandra was born. I could never forget that terrible, bright
June night.
Once more in 1897 Leo Nikolaevich had the desire to go away; but no one
knew of it. He wrote me a letter which, at his desire, was handed over
to me only after his death.{56} But that time also he did not go away.
In the autumn of that year Leo Nikolaevich gave me a power-of-attorney
to manage all his affairs, including the publication of his works.
Inexperienced and without a farthing, I energetically began to learn the
business of publishing books, and then of selling and subscribing L. N.
Tolstoy's works. I had to manage the estates and in general all his
affairs. How difficult it was, with a large family and with no
experience! I had more than once to appeal to the censor, and for that
purpose I had to go to Petersburg.
Once Leo Nikolaevich called me into his study and asked me to take over
in full ownership all his property, including his copyrights. I asked
him what need there was for that, since we were so intimate and had
children in common. He replied that he considered property an evil and
that he did not wish to own it. "So you wish to hand over that evil to
me, the creature nearest to you," I said, in tears; "I do not want it
and I shall take nothing." So I did not take my husband's property, but
I managed his affairs under the power-of-attorney, and it was only some
years afterwards that I agreed to a general division of the property,
and the father himself apportioned the shares to each of the children
and to myself. He renounced altogether the copyright of his books
written after 1881.{57} But he retained until the end of his life the
copyright of the previous books. The division was completed in 1891,
and Yasnaya Polyana was given to our youngest son, Vanichka, and to
myself.
In the same year 1891 an important event happened to me. I went to
Petersburg to petition the authorities to remove the ban on the
thirteenth volume of L. N. Tolstoy's works, which contained _Kreutzer
Sonata_. I made an application to the Emperor Alexander III. He
graciously received me, and, after I had left, he ordered the ban on the
forbidden book to be removed, although he expressed a desire that
_Kreutzer Sonata_ should not be sold as a separate volume. But some one
secretly published the story, and envious persons calumniated me by
telling the Tsar that I had disobeyed his will. The Sovereign was,
naturally, highly displeased, and, as Countess A. A. Tolstoy told me he
said: "If I was mistaken in that woman, then there are no truthful
people in the world." I got to know about this too late to clear up the
matter, and I was deeply grieved, the more so because the Tsar died that
autumn without ever knowing the truth.