PART III
TOLSTOY'S ATTITUDE TO HIS SUFFERINGS
I think that to complete what has been said here about Tolstoy's "going away" it would be desirable to look rather more attentively at the growth of Leo Nikolaevitch's inner consciousness in the course of the last decades of his life, and at that side of the development of his spiritual life which is connected with his attitude to suffering, in particular to his own sufferings arising from the conditions of his family life which have been examined in the present book.
Let us listen first of all to Leo Nikolaevitch's own words in regard to the thoughts and feelings he had to pass through in this connection. For this purpose we make use of his diary and private letters. Much precious material on this subject is contained in his diary for 1884, which he personally handed to me to take care of immediately after it was finished, and from which I will make the following extracts. This diary was kept by Leo Nikolaevitch just at that time
when the great drama of his family life, which in the end brought him to the tomb, was taking shape. I venture to give publicity to the lines quoted below, written by Leo Nikolaevitch in the most difficult moments of his life, solely for the sake of removing those misunderstandings and false deductions which, as I have indicated before, have accumulated in such numbers since his death around the question of his "going away." I hope that the reader will understand my motives and will approach these private notes of Leo Nikolaevitch with the same feeling of reverence with which I reproduce them here.