If I but spend a day enjoying
Your conversation, dearest Fet!
Too apt we often are to worry;
O'er future ills let us not fret:
Sufficient for the day, its evil—
It's best to think so, dearest Fet!
Joking apart, write quickly and let me know when to send horses to the station to meet you. I want to see you terribly.
Having at last got his ABC off his hands, Tolstoy resumed his preliminary labours for a large novel, which was to deal with the period of Peter the Great. On 19th November 1872 the Countess wrote to her brother:
Our life just now is very, very serious. All day we are occupied. Leo sits surrounded by a pile of portraits, pictures and books, engrossed in reading, marking passages and taking notes. In the evening, when the children have gone to bed, he tells me his plans, and what he means to write. At times he is quite discouraged, falls into despair, and thinks nothing will ever come of it. At other times he is on the point of setting ardently to work; but as yet I cannot say he has actually written anything, he is still preparing.
A month later she wrote: