red a most wicked feeling of resentment at
my father's paying so little attention to me and the rest of those about
him and being so absorbed in the thought of Gusef.

I willingly acknowledge that I was wrong in entertaining this
narrow-minded feeling. If I had entered fully into what my father was
feeling, I should have seen this at the time.

As far back as 1896, in consequence of the arrest of a doctor, Miss
N----, in Tula, my father wrote a long letter to Muravyof, the Minister
of Justice, in which he spoke of the "unreasonableness, uselessness,
and cruelty of the measures taken by the Government against those who
disseminate these forbidden writings," and begged him to "direct the
measures taken to punish or intimidate the perpetrators of the evil,
or to put an end to it, against the man whom you regard as the real
instigator of it... all the more, as I assure you beforehand, that I
shall continue without ceasing till my death to do what the Government
considers evil and what I consider my sacred duty before God."

As every one knows, neither this challenge nor the others that followed
it led to any result, and the arrests and deportations of those
associated with him still went on.

My father felt himself morally responsible toward all those who suffered
on his account, and every year new burdens were laid on his conscience.

MASHA'S DEATH

As I reach the description of the last days of my father's life, I must
once more make it clear that what I write is based only on the personal
impressions I received in my periodical visits to Yasnaya Polyana.

Unfortunately, I have no rich shorthand material to rely on, such as
Gusef and Bulgakof had for their memoirs, and more especially
Dushan Petrovitch Makowicki, who is preparing, I am told, a big and
conscientious work, full of truth and interest.

In November, 1906, my sister Masha died of inflammation of the lungs.
It is a curious thing that she vanished out of life with just as little
commotion as she had passed through it. Evidently this is the lot of all
the pure in heart.

No one was particularly astonished by her death. I remember that when I
received the telegram, I felt no surprise. It seemed perfectly natural
to me. Masha had married a kinsman of ours, Prince Obolenski; she lived
on her own estate at Pirogovo, twenty-one miles from us, and spent half
the year with her husband at Yasnaya. She was very delicate and had
constant illnesses.

When