Chapter L: N. also said this to me

“Perhaps it is because I am unwell, but at moments to-day I am simply driven to despair by everything that is going on in the world: the new form of oath, the revolting proclamation about enlisting university students in the army, the Dreyfus affair, the situation in Serbia, the horrors of the diseases and deaths in the Auerbach quicksilver works.... I can’t make out how mankind can go on living like this, with the sight of all this horror round them!

“It always strikes me how little man is valued, even in the simplest way as a valuable and useful animal. We value a horse which can carry, but man can also make boots, work in a factory, play the piano! And 50 per cent are dying! When I used to breed merino sheep and their death-rate reached 5 per cent, I was indignant and thought the shepherd very bad. And 50 per cent of the people are dying!”

I read L. N.’s most wonderful _Father Sergius_.

_Moscow, August 9th._ I returned from Yasnaya in the evening of the 6th. This is what I find I have written down.

The talk turned upon the woman question. The conversation was carried on in a half-jocular tone.