What were the personal religious sufferings of Tolstoy in this ocean of human wretchedness—of material misery, not misery created by the mind of a self-wearied idler?
He feared this accusation, and wept over it in secret, though he was convinced that he was no idler, but something different, that no one but himself comprehended.
When the train stopped, the half-estranged friends could perceive by the lamplight that the assemblage of idlers enclosed as a kernel a group of men in black cloaks.
" To hear is to obey. Who says I'm a 'frivolous idler' now" ? And Charlie sat down at the writing table with alacrity, for these hours in the little room were his best and happiest.
Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to.
To a vision free to follow his whole orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trained intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents.