Leo Nikolaevich's denial of the church and orthodoxy had a sharp contrast in his recognition of the efficacy and wisdom of Christ's teaching, which he considered incompatible with the doctrine of the church. Personally I could have no difference with him regarding the Gospel, since I considered the Gospel to be the foundation of the orthodox faith.[{45}] When he accepted Christ's teaching and tried to live in accordance with the Gospel, Leo Nikolaevich began to suffer through our apparently luxurious mode of life, which I could not alter. I simply did not understand why I should alter it, nor could I alter conditions which had not been created by ourselves. If I had given away all my fortune at my husband's desire (I don't know to whom), if I had been left in poverty with nine children, I should have had to work for the family—to feed, do the sewing for, wash, bring up my children without education. Leo Nikolaevich, by vocation and inclination, could have done nothing else but write.[{46}] He was always rushing off from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana; he lived alone there, read, wrote, and thought out his work. I bore these partings from him with difficulty, but I considered them necessary for my husband's intellectual work and peace of mind.
In my turn, as I grew older, the external and internal complexity of life made me look seriously into its demands, and again, as in my early youth, I turned to philosophy, to the wisdom of the thinkers who had preceded us. At that time, about 1881 or 1882, Prince Leonid Dmitrievich Urusov,[{47}] an intimate friend who often visited us and who was Deputy Governor of the Tula Province, translated into Russian The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and brought us the book to read. The thoughts of that royal sage produced a great impression on me. Later Prince Urusov gave me the works of Seneca in a French translation. The brilliant style and richness of thought in that philosopher so attracted me that I read his works through twice. I then read in succession various philosophers, buying their books and copying out the ideas and sayings which struck me. I remember how impressed I was by Epictetus's thoughts on death. I found Spinoza very difficult to understand, but I became interested in his Ethics and especially in his explanation of the conception of God. Socrates, Plato, and other philosophers, but particularly the Greeks, enchanted me, and I can say that these sages helped me greatly to live and to think. Later on I also tried to read modern philosophers; I read Schopenhauer and others, but I much preferred the ancients. Of Leo Nikolaevich's philosophical works I liked and understood best his book On Life, and I translated it into French with the assistance of M. Tastevin. I worked hard at that translation, being particularly ill at the time and expecting the birth of our last child, Vanichka. While working conscientiously at the translation, I often went for advice to my husband and to the philosophers, N. Y. Grot and V. S. Solovev.
I always very much liked writing of whatever kind. When Leo Nikolaevich was writing his A. B. C. and Four Reading-Books, he used to intrust to me the work of making up sentences and of re-telling and translating them so as to adapt them to the Russian language and customs. I also wrote the small story Sparrows and others.
On the appearance of Kreutzer Sonata, which I never liked, I wrote a story from the woman's point of view, but I did not publish it. Later on I wrote a tale, A Song without Words. I got the idea for it by seeing girls at a concert behave strangely to a famous pianist. They kissed his goloshes, tore his handkerchief to pieces and altogether acted as if they were mad. What has music to do with all that? I wanted to convey the idea that our attitude towards art, as towards nature, must be chaste, i. e. pure, without any mixture of base human passions.
When I taught the children, I wrote a Russian grammar from which they quickly learnt to write correctly. Unfortunately the Russian teacher, who much approved of my work, lost it.
I used to invent stories to tell to my children, and I wrote some of them down and later published them with illustrations. In the first story, Skeleton Aurelias, I used an idea of Leo Nikolaevich's. He began to write the story, but the beginning was lost. Whether it was lost with his suit-case,[{48}] or whether it was carried off with the other MSS., I do not know.[{49}]
I always regarded my literary work with a certain contempt and irony, considering it in the nature of a joke. For instance, after reading various writings of the decadents, I tried to imitate them, and, for a joke, wrote prose poems under the title Groans. They were published, without my name, and without the author being known, in the Journal Dlva Vsvekh for March, 1904.
I remember two others of my writings, translations which Leo Nikolaevich commissioned me to do. One was from the German, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,[{50}] which he afterwards corrected himself, and the other from English, On the Sect of the Bahaists.[{51}]
I also published various articles in newspapers. The most important were: my appeal for funds for the famine-stricken on 3 November, 1891; my letter to the Metropolitans and Synod on Leo Nikolaevich's excommunication, which had deeply revolted and pained me.[{52}] I also published an article, A Recollection of Turgenev, in the Orlovskii Vyestnik, a critical article on Andreyev, and others.[{53}]
If I ever wrote anything of value, it was the seven thick note-books, under the title My Life.[{54}] In them I described all my long life up to 1897. When after the death of Leo Nikolaevich I was, quite illegally, forbidden access to the Historical Museum, where I had placed for safe keeping all my husband's papers, diaries, letters, note-books, as well as my own, I could not continue my work without materials, and three years of my life, which was drawing to a close, were lost to the work. And who knows better than I the life of Leo Nikolaevich? It was I myself who in 1894 placed those documents first in the Rumyantsev Museum, and later during its repair transferred them to the Historical Museum, where they now lie awaiting the verdict as to their fate from the courts of law.[{55}]