Ah, if you knew how agonizingly my head aches to-day! I want to come to
Petersburg if only to lie motionless indoors for two days and only go out
to dinner. For some reason I feel utterly exhausted. It's all this cursed
influenza.

How many persons could you and would you undertake to feed? Tolstoy! ah,
Tolstoy! In these days he is not a man but a super-man, a Jupiter. In the
_Sbornik_ he has published an article about the relief centres, and the
article consists of advice and practical instructions. So business-like,
simple, and sensible that, as the editor of _Russkiya Vyedomosti_ said, it
ought to be printed in the _Government Gazette_, instead of in the
_Sbornik_....




December 13, 1891.


Now I understand why you don't sleep well at night. If I had written a
story like that I should not have slept for ten nights in succession. The
most terrible passage is where Varya strangles the hero and initiates him
into the mysteries of the life beyond the grave. It's terrifying and
consistent with spiritualism. You mustn't cut out a single word from
Varya's speeches, especially where they are both riding on horseback. Don't
touch it. The idea of the story is good, and the incidents are fantastic
and interesting....

But why do you talk of our "nervous age"? There really is no nervous age.
As people lived in the past so they live now, and the nerves of to-day are