From time to time he [Tolstoy] posed—a tiring obligation—for painters and sculptors: for Repin, Pasternak who did a study of the family, Aronson, and… - Alexandra Tolstaya

How difficult it is to recognize spiritual illness in a person close to you, especially if the habit of years has established that person's power and authority. Had I realized that my mother was ill, my whole attitude toward her would have been different. But people far more experienced than I were equally blind. With every day Mother grew more nervous. Everything irritated her, made her weep, have hysterics, outbursts of temper.

Masha died quietly, conscious to the last. Father and Kolya were sitting by her bed. They raised her on her pillow. An hour before she died she opened her eyes wide, saw Father and laid his hand on her breast. Father leaned over her and raised her thin, transparent hand to his lips. “I am dying,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

Seryozha was different from all the other Tolstoys because of his great shyness and reserve. He often concealed his emotions, his outbursts of tenderness or passion, under a cloak of deliberate rudeness, or brusqueness. The most serious-minded and industrious of all the Tolstoy brothers, he had his own separate existence; he did not lean toward either his mother, or his father, and he rarely confided his thoughts to the members of his family. It was only when he sat down to the piano and for hours played his beloved Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Grieg, or attempted to compose something himself, that everyone listened to him.