- pied himself instead with log-splitting, reaping, and
making boots which anybody could do, and do better. It was tiresome of him to play at being "Robinson Crusoe," as Countess Tolstoy expressed it.
No doubt he was provoking, but though Tolstoy and his wife sometimes quarreled, they were devoted to one another all the same, as may be seen by the very delightful quotation out of a letter of Countess Tolstoy's to her husband.
All at once I pictured you vividly to myself, and a sudden
flood of tenderness rose in me. There is something in
you so wise, kind, naïve, and obstinate, and it is all lit
up by that tender interest for every one natural to you
alone, and by your look that reaches to people's souls.
Sometimes Tolstoy had to accompany his family
to Moscow. This became the regular arrangement
in the winter, when his daughter Tanya grew up and
began to go to balls and parties. Countess Tolstoy
was always very energetic, arranging their flat and
calling upon people who would ask her daughter to
parties.
Tolstoy, after living in the country, found the artificiality of town life almost unbearable, and the luxury of the circle they lived in was to him torture. He had to occupy himself in order to bear it. One winter he spent his time taking a census of people in the poorest part of Moscow.
He was so horrified at the appalling misery he came
