At tea Elisabetha Valerianovna asked her mother, Marie Nikolaevna, to have some milk, and she began to drink it.
Tolstoi said:
“How is it, Mashenka, that you drink it? For myself, if I am told to drink milk, I want sherry, and, when I’m told to drink sherry, I want milk.” ...
Marie Nikolaevna began recalling the past. When they lived in Moscow, soon after the death of their father in 1837-38, Tolstoi, who was then about eight or nine, jumped out of the first-floor window and was badly hurt.
Tolstoi said:
“I remember that quite well. I wanted to see what would happen, and I even remember that, as I jumped, I tried to jump upwards.”
July 28th. Yesterday my wife and I were at Yasnaya. Tolstoi’s leg is still painful. He lies in a chair with it stretched out. He suffers from inflammation and from embolism of the vein. They say he must lie like that for six weeks.
We arrived at Yasnaya about eight o’clock. Tolstoi sat in a chair in the dining-room. He played chess with S. Then he began to play chess with me. S. looked on at our game for a time, and then sitting near the round table he began to talk to Sophie Andreevna about the children’s anthology to be chosen from Tolstoi’s works, which he wishes to publish for his Jubilee (Tolstoi’s eighty years). The conversation was terrible. Sophie Andreevna said in the sharpest way that she was not going to be cheated out of her rights, that she would go to a lawyer and would write to the papers about it. S. behaved rather well, and asked her to point out what she would allow to be published; but she would not listen to reason. At last she said that it was the same as if he stole her silver spoons. It was intolerably humiliating and painful.
Sophie Andreevna made attempts to draw Tolstoi into the dispute. Poor Tolstoi! He suffered, frowned, shook his head in horror, but kept silent. The greatest deed in his life is his humility and patience with Sophie Andreevna. His behaviour is all the more difficult, because people criticize him for being humble and long-suffering in this way. How much easier it would be for him to leave this kind of life, which he not only does not want, but which is intolerable to him.