nswered?

"'Let him come here, if he wants me.' Isn't that just the same as Forna?

"No, Lyovotchka is very proud. Nothing would induce him to go, and he
was quite right; but it's no good talking of humility."

During the last years of Sergei Nikolayevitch's life my father was
particularly friendly and affectionate with him, and delighted in
sharing his thoughts with him.

A. A. Fet in his reminiscences describes the character of all the three
Tolstoy brothers with extraordinary perspicacity:

I am convinced that the fundamental type of all the three Tolstoy
brothers was identical, just as the type of all maple-leaves is
identical, despite the variety of their configurations. And if I set
myself to develop the idea, I could show to what a degree all three
brothers shared in that passionate enthusiasm without which it would
have been impossible for one of them to turn into the poet Lyoff
Tolstoy. The difference of their attitude to life was determined by
the difference of the ways in which they turned their backs on their
unfulfilled dreams. Nikolai quenched his ardor in skeptical derision,
Lyoff renounced his unrealized dreams with silent reproach, and Sergei
with morbid misanthropy. The greater the original store of love in such
characters, the stronger, if only for a time, is their resemblance to
Timon of Athens.

In the winter of 1901-02 my father was ill in the Crimea, and for a
long time lay between life and death. Uncle Seryozha, who felt himself
getting weaker, could not bring himself to leave Pirogovo, and in his
own home followed anxiously the course of my father's illness by the
letters which several members of our family wrote him, and by the
bulletins in the newspapers.

When my father began to improve, I went back home, and on the way from
the Crimea went to Pirogovo, in order to tell Uncle Seryozha personally
about the course of the illness and about the present condition of my
father's health. I remember how joyfully and gratefully he welcomed me.

"How glad I am that you came! Now tell me all about it. Who is with him?
All of them? And who nurses him most? Do you go on duty in turn? And at
night, too? He can't get out of bed. Ah, that's the worst thing of all!

"It will be my turn to die soon; a year sooner or later, what does it
matter? But to lie helpless, a burden to every one, to have others doing
everything for you, lifting you and helping you to sit up, that's what's
so awful.

"And how