TOLSTOY'S LETTER TO HIS DAUGHTER ALEXANDRA LVOVONA
29 October, 1910, Optina Monastery.
"...will tell you all about me, my dear friend Sasha. It is hard. I can't help feeling it a great load on me. The chief thing is—not to do wrong. That is the difficulty. Certainly, I have sinned and shall sin, but I should wish to sin less.
This is the chief thing above all others, that I wish for you, the more so that I know that the task is terrible and beyond your powers at your age. I have not decided anything, and I do not want to decide. I am trying to do only what I can't help doing; and not to do what I need not do. From my letter to Chertkov you will see, not how I look at this question, but how I feel about it. I hope very much that good will come from the influence of Tanya and Serge.[Q]
The chief thing is that they should realize and try to suggest to her (Countess S. A. T.) that this perpetual spying, eavesdropping, incessant complaining, ordering me about, as her fancy takes her, constant managing, pretended hatred of the man who is nearest and most necessary to me, with her open hatred of me and pretence of love,—that a life like this is not only unpleasant, but impossible; and if one of us is to drown himself, let it not be her on any account, but myself; that there is but one thing I want—freedom from her, from that falsehood, pretence, and spite with which her whole being is permeated.
Of course they cannot suggest this to her, but they can suggest to her that all her acts towards me not only do not express love but are inspired by the obvious wish to kill me, which she will achieve since I hope that the third fit which attacks me will save her as well as myself from the terrible state in which we have lived, to which I do not wish to return.
You see, my dear, how wicked I am. I do not conceal myself from you. I do not send for you yet, but I will as soon as I can, very shortly. Write and tell me how you are. I kiss you.
L. Tolstoy.
The following extracts from Tolstoy's diary which describe his actual flight and the circumstances that led up to it also throw light upon Countess Tolstoy's attitude to her husband, and completely refute the false accounts which she persisted in publishing everywhere from the day of Tolstoy's death until the present time.