Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/380

 saved me and her. In eight years she bore five children, and she nursed them all but the first herself."

"Where are your children now?" I asked.

"The children?" he repeated the question, with an expression of terror.

"Excuse me, maybe this is too painful for you?"

"No, not at all. My wife's sister and her brother have taken them. They did not give them to me. I have given them my estate, but they did not give them up to me. I am something like a lunatic according to them. I am now leaving them. I saw them, but they will not let me have then, because I should educate them to be different from their parents, whereas it is necessary for them to be like them. Well, what is to be done? Of course they will not let me have them, and they will not trust me. Besides, I do not know whether I should have strength enough to bring them up. I think not. I am a ruin, a cripple. There is just one thing in me I know. Yes. this much is certain: I know that which others will not know so soon.

"Yes, the children are alive and growing up to be just such savages as all around them are. I have seen them, I have seen them three times. I can do nothing for them, nothing. I am now travelling south, to my home: I have a cottage and garden there.

"Yes, it will be a long time before people will find out that which I know. It is easy enough to find out how much iron and what metals there are in the sun and stars; but it is hard, dreadfully hard, to comprehend that which casts any aspersions on our swinishness!

"I am thankful to you for being willing to listen to me.