cessaries of life as he would have been at
Yasnaya Polyana. It would have been the most palpable self-deception.

Knowing my father as I did, I felt that the question of his flight was
not so simple as it seemed to others, and the problem lay long unsolved
before me until it was suddenly made clear by the will that he left
behind him.

I remember how, after N. S. Leskof's death, my father read me his
posthumous instructions with regard to a pauper funeral, with no
speeches at the grave, and so on, and how the idea of writing his own
will then came into his head for the first time.

His first will was written in his diary, on March 27, 1895. [27]

The fourth paragraph, to which I wish to call particular attention,
contains a request to his next of kin to transfer the right of
publishing his writings to society at large, or, in other words, to
renounce the copyright of them.

"But I only request it, and do not direct it. It is a good thing to do.
And it will be good for you to do it; but if you do not do it, that is
your affair. It means that you are not yet ready to do it. The fact that
my writings have been bought and sold during these last ten years has
been the most painful thing in my whole life to me."

Three copies were made of this will, and they were kept by my sister
Masha, my brother Sergei, and Tchertkof.

I knew of its existence, but I never saw it till after my father's
death, and I never inquired of anybody about the details.

I knew my father's views about copyright, and no will of his could have
added anything to what I knew. I knew, moreover, that this will was not
properly executed according to the forms of law, and personally I was
glad of that, for I saw in it another proof of my father's confidence
in his family. I need hardly add that I never doubted that my father's
wishes would be carried out.

My sister Masha, with whom I once had a conversation on the subject, was
of the same opinion.

In 1909 my father stayed with Mr. Tchertkof at Krekshin, and there for
the first time he wrote a formal will, attested by the signature of
witnesses. How this will came to be written I do not know, and I do not
intend to discuss it. It afterward appeared that it also was imperfect
from a legal point of view, and in October, 1909, it had all to be done
again.

As to the writing of the third we are fully informed by Mr. F. Strakhof
in an article which he published in the St. Petersburg "Gazette" on
Nov