is already a long time that I am tortured by the lack of harmony between my life and my beliefs" and in which further on he wrote about his decision to do that which "he had wanted to do for a long time: to go away." But no matter how difficult the conditions of his family life were at this time, they were not yet sufficiently ripe to bring him over to a definite decision to leave his family, and to fulfil his ancient dream of life in more simple conditions among working people. And in view of the fact that he decided to change his decision, he gave the above-mentioned letter for safe-keeping to his son-in-law, Prince N. L. Obolensky, with the request to give it to the one designated, when he was no longer among the living. Although Tolstoi remained this time in Yasnaya Polyana, his life among master-class conditions did not cease to burden him even for a short time, and he felt himself alone,[1] he often experienced sorrow as before, and in spirit he felt "solemn," "gloomy."[2]
At the end of that year (1897), he wrote the thought in his Journal, of the tragedy of the situation of "a man kindly disposed wishing only the good" but who in return meets only "hissing malice and the hatred of people."[3] And soon again he writes in his Journal that he is in an agonised, sad, crushed state,[4] which, however, he is trying to
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