heart-breaking wretchedness, he had asked himself: “Well, Leo Tolstoy, are you living according to the principles you profess?”
He replied miserably:
“I am dying of shame; I am guilty; I am contemptible… Yet compare my former life with my life of to-day. You will see that I am trying to live according to the laws of God. I have not done the thousandth part of what I ought to do, and I am confused; but I have failed to do it not because I did not wish to do it, but because I could not… Blame me, but not the path I am taking. If I know the road to my house, and if I stagger along it like a drunken man, does that show that the road is bad? Show me another, or follow me along the true path, as I am ready to follow you. But do not discourage me, do not rejoice in my distress, do not joyfully cry out: ‘Look! He said he was going to the house, and he is falling into the ditch!’ No, do not be glad, but help me, support me!… Help me! My heart is torn with despair lest we should all be astray; and when I make every effort to escape you, at each effort, instead of having compassion, point at me with your finger crying, ‘Look, he is falling into the ditch with us!’”[1]
When death was nearer, he wrote once more:
“I am not a saint: I have never professed to be one. I am a man who allows himself to be carried away, and who often does not say all that he thinks and feels; not because he does not want to, but
- ↑ Letter to a friend, 1895 (the French version being published in Plaisirs cruels, 1895).
