wishes of his wife, who
accompanied him, nevertheless. When her baby came, they allowed her to
occupy a room in the mansion and required no work from her, since she
had the care of the child. "They never swept or scrubbed anything, and
they propagated every insect known to man, and probably a few new ones."
But the count has never preached this doctrine, or that an indefinite
number of persons should occupy a single cottage. Thus do his too
enthusiastic disciples discredit him by running into excesses.

So far as he is concerned, there is not the slightest doubt that he
would gladly attempt the life which he advocates. But if he were to take
up his residence in a peasant's cottage, and try to support himself on
what his labors brought in exclusively, he would be dead in less than a
month. He suffers from liver disease; he has not been used to hard labor
from early youth; he cannot, at his age, accustom himself to it any more
than he can compel his stomach to accept a purely vegetable diet in
place of the meat diet on which he has been brought up. He strives
conscientiously to do it. Even the fits of illness caused by his severe
treatment of himself do not break his spirit. He exercises not the
slightest calculation or forethought in the care of his health, either
before it breaks down or afterwards. For example: about five years ago
he bruised his leg seriously against the wheel of a peasant cart.
Instead of resting it, he persisted in working. Erysipelas developed.
The Tula doctor paid him numerous visits, at fifteen rubles a visit.
Then gangrene threatened, and a doctor was sent for from Moscow. He was
a celebrity; price three hundred and fifty rubles. This was penny wise
and pound foolish, of course. But in all probability the count feels the
responsibility of exerting his will in this matter of labor all the more
because it does not come easy to him, and he attributes to weakness of
will power what a peasant would recognize as simple physical exhaustion.
The peasant would not hesitate to climb to the top of his oven and stay
there until his illness was over, with not a thought whether the work
were done or not; and yet the peasant would work far beyond the bounds
of what one would suppose that a man could endure. But Count Tolstoy
overrates his powers of endurance, and, having exhausted his forces in
one desperate spurt, he is naturally obliged to spend more than a
corresponding amount of time in recuperating, even