Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount particularly moved Tolstoy. Yet, by any measure, Tolstoy couldn’t live out the demands of Christ. As his wife complained: There is so little genuine warmth about him; his kindness does not come from his heart, but merely from his principles. His biographies will tell of how he helped the laborers to carry buckets of water, but no one will ever know that he never gave his wife a rest and never—in all these thirty-two years—gave his child a drink of water or spent five minutes by his bedside to give me a chance to rest a little from all my labors. 26
