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Rh “Moscow. We shall have been here a month tomorrow. The first two weeks I cried every day, for Leo was not only sad, but absolutely broken. He did not sleep, he did not eat, at times even he wept; I thought I should go mad.”

For a time they had to live their lives apart. They begged one another’s pardon for causing mutual suffering. We see how they always loved each other. He writes to her:

“You say, ‘I love you, and you do not need my love.’ It is the only thing I do need… Your love causes me more gladness than anything in the world.”

But as soon as they are together again the same discord occurs. The Countess cannot share this religious mania which is now impelling Tolstoy to study Hebrew with a rabbi.

“Nothing else interests him any longer. He is wasting his energies in foolishness. I cannot conceal my impatience.”

She writes to him:

“It can only sadden me that such intellectual energies should spend themselves in chopping wood, heating the samovar, and cobbling boots.”

She adds, with affectionate, half-ironical humour of a mother who watches a child playing a foolish game:

“Finally, I have pacified myself with the Russian proverb: ‘Let the child play as he will, so long as he doesn’t cry.’”