Tolstoy on women

I keep finding good stuff by Karl Stern in my notebooks, things I had forgotten about. This story from his book Flight from Woman is too good to keep to myself:

Maxim Gorky tells in his Reminiscences of Tolstoy how one day a group of men, among them Chekhov, were sitting in the garden and talking about women. Tolstoy listened for a long time in silence, and then suddenly remarked: "I am only going to tell the truth about women when I am standing with one foot in the grave -- I shall say it, jump into the coffin, pull the lid, and then I'll say: 'Do with me what you want!'" ... Though a joke, there is one thing the scene and Tolstoy's remark convey -- a sense of mystery. If the truth about women is something a literary genius will keep until the moment of his death, there must be, besides an old man's sly crack, another implication -- the inexpressible, a kind of 'mysterium tremendum'.

(You see, women, what fascination you exert on us poor helpless males? You are all an awesome mystery to us!)