Half an hour later the friend came across the room to him and repeated
exactly the same remark again. This time my father made no reply. In
the evening, when the friend was preparing to go home, as he was saying
good-by to my father, he held his hand in his and began once more:

"Still, I must tell you, Lyoff Nikolaievich, that I and my wife have
been thinking it over, and we have come to the conclusion," and so on,
word for word the same.

"No, no, I want to die--to die as soon as possible," groaned my father
when he had seen the friend off.

"Isn't it all the same whether it's 'Circle of Reading' or 'For Every
Day'? No, it's time for me to die: I cannot live like this any longer."

And, after all, in the end, one of the editions of the sayings of the
wise was called "For Every Day" instead of "Circle of Reading."

"Ah, my dear, ever since this Mr. ---- turned up, I really don't know
which of Lyoff Nikolaievich's writings are by Lyoff Nikolaievich and
which are by Mr. ----!" murmured our old friend, the pure-hearted and
far from malicious Marya Alexandrovna Schmidt.

This sort of intrusion into my father's work as an author bore, in the
"friend's" language, the modest title of "corrections beforehand," and
there is no doubt that Marya Alexandrovna was right, for no one will
ever know where what my father wrote ends and where his concessions to
Mr. ----'s persistent "corrections beforehand" begin, all the more as
this careful adviser had the forethought to arrange that when my father
answered his letters he was always to return him the letters they were
answers to.[25]

Besides the desire for death that my father displayed, in the last years
of his life he cherished another dream, which he made no secret of
his hope of realizing, and that was the desire to suffer for his
convictions. The first impulse in this direction was given him by
the persecution on the part of the authorities to which, during his
lifetime, many of his friends and fellow-thinkers were subjected.

When he heard of any one being put in jail or deported for disseminating
his writings, he was so disturbed about it that one was really sorry
for him. I remember my arrival at Yasnaya some days after Gusef's
arrest.[26] I stayed two days with my father, and heard of nothing but
Gusef. As if there were nobody in the world but Gusef! I must confess
that, sorry as I was for Gusef, who was shut up at the time in the local
prison at Krapivna, I harbo