He
was entirely unaffected in his literary work, and everything that
he wrote down to the last days of his life is marked by his
characteristic logicalness and force. It may be that the reason he
forgot the details of real life was because he was too deeply
absorbed in his abstract work.
My wife was at Yasnaya Polyana in October, and
when she came home she told me that there was something wrong
there. "Your mother is nervous and hysterical; your father is in
a silent and gloomy frame of mind."
I was very busy with my office work, but made up my mind to
devote my first free day to going and seeing my father and mother.
When I got to Yasnaya, my father had already left it.
I paid Aunt Masha a visit some little time after my father's
funeral. We sat together in her comfortable little cell, and she
repeated to me once more in detail the oft-repeated story of my
father's last visit to her.
"He sat in that very arm-chair where you are sitting now, and
how he cried!" she said.
"When Sasha arrived with her girl friend, they set to work
studying this map of Russia and planning out a route to the
Caucasus. Lyovotchka sat there thoughtful and melancholy.
"'Never mind, Papa; it'll be all right,' said Sasha, trying to
encourage him.
"'Ah, you women, you women!' answered her father, bitterly.
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