Tolstoi played chess with me. Later P. S. Usov came, who also played a game of chess with Tolstoi. We began to talk. Tolstoi became animated. The post arrived. There were three letters from Chertkov. In one of them there were many pages of closely written manuscript.
Tolstoi glanced at it and said:
“It is probably a woman’s writing. How nice it would be if one need not read it!”
The manuscript, however, turned out not to be from a woman, so that Tolstoi put it aside to read it.
Referring to his daughter’s misfortune, Tolstoi said:
“I am not sorry that my daughters have no children; I cannot be glad that I have grandchildren. I know that they will inevitably grow up to be idlers. My daughters are certainly anxious that this should not be so, but considering the surroundings in which they will have to be brought up, it is very difficult to avoid it. All my life long I have had these surroundings, and, however much I struggle, I can do nothing. Now, during the Christmas season I can’t bear to look at this mad extravagance; these visits. What a terrible absurdity it is!”
Usov was saying in what circumstances a doctor has the right to bring on birth artificially, thereby killing the baby.
Tolstoi replied:
“It is always immoral. For the most part, when there are various ways of relieving the patient, oxygen, etc., it is difficult to abstain from using them; but it would be better if they did not exist. We shall all die without fail, and the doctors’ activity is directed towards fighting death. But to die—in ten days or in ten years—is all the same. How terrible it is that it is always concealed from the patient that he is dying! We are none of us accustomed to look death in the face!”
Usov defended the activity of doctors, considering it a useful one.