It was because he felt the beauty of his own creations that Leo Nikolaevich wrote: "The poet takes the best out of his life and puts it into his writings. Hence his writing is beautiful and his life bad." But his life at that time was not bad; it was as good and as pure as his work.
How I loved copying _War and Peace_! I wrote in my diary: "The consciousness of serving a genius and a great man has given me strength for anything." I also wrote in a letter to Leo Nikolaevich: "The copying of _War and Peace_ uplifts me very much morally, _i. e._ spiritually. When I sit down to copy it, I am carried away into a world of poetry, and sometimes it even seems to me that it is not your novel that is so good, but I that am so clever." In my diary I also wrote: "Levochka all the winter has been writing with irritation, often with tears and pain. In my opinion, his novel, _War and Peace_, must be superb. Whatever he has read to me moves me to tears." In 1865, when my husband was in Moscow looking up historical material, I wrote to him: "Today I copied and read on a little ahead, what I had not yet seen nor read, namely, how the miserable, muffled-up old Mack himself arrives to admit his defeat, and round him stand the inquisitive aides-de-camp, and he is almost crying, and his meeting with Kutuzov. I liked it immensely, and that is what I am writing to tell you."
In November, 1866, Leo Nikolaevich used to go to the Rumyantsev Museum and read up everything about the freemasons. Before leaving Yasnaya Polyana he always left me work to copy. When I had finished it, I sent it off to Moscow, and I wrote to my husband: "How have you decided about the novel? I have got to love your novel very much. When I sent the fair-copy off to Moscow, I felt as if I had sent off a child and I am afraid that some harm may come to it."
In copying I was often astonished and could not understand why Leo Nikolaevich corrected or destroyed what seemed so beautiful, and I used to be delighted if he put back what he had struck out. Sometimes proofs which had been finally corrected and sent off, were returned again to Leo Nikolaevich at his request in order to be recorrected and recopied. Or a telegram would be sent to substitute _one_ word for another. My whole soul became so immersed in copying that I began myself to feel when it was not altogether right, for instance, when there were frequent repetitions of the same word, long periods, wrong punctuation, obscurity, etc. I used to point all these things out to Leo Nikolaevich. Sometimes he was glad for my remarks; sometimes he would explain why it ought to remain as it was: he would say that details do not matter, only the general scheme matters.