Louise sent for me. He was naughty and
obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then I took the
matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's help to get the
other children up, telling him that I did not love him. For a long time
he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped out of bed, ran to me in
his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not calm him for a long time.
It was plain that what troubled him most was that he had grieved me.
Afterwards in the evening when I gave him his ticket, he again began
crying piteously and kissing me. One can do anything with him by
tenderness.

"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired.

"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how
they have behaved."

Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and
continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down
everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their
mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections
on educational methods. They were for the most part quite insignificant
trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the father either, now
that he read this diary about his children for the first time.

Under the date "5" was entered:

Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding. He had
none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others while they were
eating! I think that punishment by depriving children of sweets only
develops their greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.

Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant eyes
gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her
diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of his
admiration for his wife.

Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or even
done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of which the
sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas
been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that his steady,
tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling of wonder at
her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost beyond his reach,
in which she had her being.

He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the
more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part of
himself.

"I quite, quite a