Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/29

 a woman is dangerous who holds a man by his. . . but she who holds him by his soul. . . ."

When I pointed out the contradiction in this with his "Kreutzer Sonata," the radiance of a sudden smile beamed through his beard, and he said:

"I am not a chaffinch."

In the evening, while walking, he suddenly said: "Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will be—the tragedy of the bedroom."

Saying this, he smiled triumphantly: at times he has the broad, calm smile of a man who has overcome something extremely difficult or from whom some sharp, long-gnawing pain has lifted suddenly. Every thought burrows into his soul like a tick; he either tears it out at once or allows it to have its fill of his blood, and then, when full, it just drops off of itself.

He read to Suler and me a variant of the scene of the fall of "Father Sergius"—a merciless scene. Suler pouted and fidgeted uneasily.

"What's the matter? Don't you like it?" Leo Nicolayevitch asked.

"It's too brutal, as though from Dostoevsky. She is a filthy girl, and her breasts like pancakes, and all that. Why didn't he sin with a beautiful, healthy woman?"

"That would be sin without justification; as it