In fact, the sweeping conclusion at which Tolstoy arrives is that:

I not only see no use, but I see great harm, in teaching history or geography before the University is reached.

And he leaves it an open question whether even the University should concern itself with such subjects.

Drawing was a favourite lesson with the boys; but I must confine myself to a single extract on that subject:

We drew figures from the blackboard in the following way: I first drew a horizontal or a vertical line, dividing it into parts by dots, and the pupils copied this line. Then I drew another or several perpendicular or sloping lines, standing in a certain relation to the first, and similarly divided up. Then we joined the dots of these different lines by others (straight or curved), and formed some symmetrical figure which, as it was gradually evolved, was copied by the boys. It seemed to me that this was a good plan: first, because the boy clearly saw the whole process of the formation of the figure, and secondly, because his perception of the co-relation of lines was developed by this drawing from the board, much better than by copying drawings or designs....

It is nearly always useless to hang up a large complete picture or figure, because a beginner is quite at a loss before it, as he would be before an object from nature. But the growth of the figure before his eyes has an important meaning. In this case the pupil sees the backbone and skeleton of the drawing on which the body is subsequently formed. The pupils were always called on to criticise the lines and their relation, as I drew them. I often purposely drew them wrong, to find out in how far their judgment of the co-relation and incorrectness of the lines had been developed. Then again, when I was drawing my figure I asked the boys where they thought the next line should be added; and I even made one or other of them invent the shape of the figure himself.

In this way I not only aroused a more lively interest, but got the boys to participate freely in the formation and development of the figures; and this prevented the question. Why? which boys so naturally put when they are set to draw from copies.

The ease or difficulty with which it was understood, and the more or less interest evoked, chiefly influenced the choice of the method of instruction; and I often quite abandoned what I had prepared for the lesson, merely because it was dull or foreign to the boys.

In the singing class, Tolstoy very soon found that notes written on the staff were not easily grasped by the pupils, and after using the staff for some ten lessons, he once showed the boys the use of numbers instead, and from that day forward they always asked him to use numbers, and they themselves always used numbers in writing music. This method is much more convenient, Tolstoy considers, for explaining both the intervals and the changes of key. The pupils who were not musical soon dropped out of the class, and the lessons with those who were, sometimes went on for three or four hours at a stretch. He tried to teach them musical time in the usual manner, but succeeded so badly that he had to take that and melody separately. First he took the sounds without reference to time, and then beat the time without considering the sounds, and finally joined the two processes together. After several lessons he found that the method he had drifted into, combined the chief features (though not some of the minor peculiarities) of Chevet's method, which, as already mentioned, he had seen in successful operation in Paris. After a very few lessons, two of the boys used to write down the melodies of the songs they knew, and were almost able to read music at sight.

From the limited experience he had in teaching music, Tolstoy—to quote his own words almost textually—became convinced that: (1) To write sounds by means of figures is the most profitable method; (2) To teach time separately from sound is the most profitable method; (3) For the teaching of music to be willingly and fruitfully received, one must from the start teach the art and not aim merely at dexterity in singing or playing. Spoilt young ladies may be taught to play Burgmüller's exercises; but it is better not to teach the children of the people at all, than to teach them mechanically; (4) Nothing so harms musical instruction as what looks like a knowledge of music: namely the performance of choirs, and performances at examinations, speech-days, or in church; and (5) In teaching music to the people, the thing to be aimed at is to impart our knowledge of the general laws of music, but not the false taste we have developed among us.

In one of the most remarkable of his articles, Tolstoy tells how he discovered that Fédka and Syómka possessed literary ability of the highest order. Composition lessons had not gone well, until one day Tolstoy proposed that the children should write a story of peasant life to illustrate a popular proverb. Most of them felt this to be beyond their powers, and went on with their other occupations. One of them, however, bade Tolstoy write it himself in competition with them, and he set to work to do so, till Fédka, climbing on the back of his chair, interrupted him by reading over his shoulder. Tolstoy then began reading out what he had composed, and explaining how he thought of continuing the story. Several of the boys became interested, not approving of Tolstoy's work, but criticising and amending it, offering suggestions and supplying details. Syómka and Fédka particularly distinguished themselves, and showed extraordinary imagination, and such judgment, sense of proportion, restraint, and power of clothing their thoughts in words, that Tolstoy was carried away by the interest of the work and wrote as hard as he could to their dictation, having constantly to ask them to wait and not forget the details they had suggested. Fédka—of whom Tolstoy says that 'The chief quality in every art, the sense of proportion, was in him extraordinarily developed: he writhed at every superfluous detail suggested by any of the other boys,'—gradually took control of the work, and ruled so despotically and with such evident right, that the others dropped off and went home, except Syómka, who along his own more matter-of-fact line continued to co-operate.

We worked from seven in the evening till eleven. They felt neither hunger nor weariness and were even angry with me when I stopped writing; and they set to work to do it themselves turn and turn about, but did not get on well and soon gave it up....

I left the lesson because I was too excited.

'What is the matter with you? Why are you so pale: are you ill?' asked my colleague. Indeed, only two or three times in my life have I experienced such strong emotion as during that evening....

Next day Tolstoy could hardly believe the experience of the night before. It seemed incredible that a peasant boy, hardly able to read, should suddenly display such marvellous command of artistic creative power.

It seemed to me strange and offensive that I, the author of Childhood, who had achieved a certain success and was recognised by the educated Russian public as possessing artistic talent, should in artistic matters not merely be unable to instruct or help eleven-year-old Syómka and Fédka, but should hardly be able, except at a happy moment of excitement, to keep up with them and understand them.

Next day we set to work to continue the story. When I asked Fédka if he had thought of a continuation, he only waved his hand and remarked: 'I know, I know!... Who will do the writing?'... We resumed the work, and again the boys showed the same enthusiasm, and the same sense of artistic truth and proportion.

Half-way through the lesson I had to leave them. They wrote two pages without me, as just in feeling and as true to life as the preceding ones. These two pages were rather poorer in detail, some of the details were not quite happily placed, and there were also a couple of repetitions. All this had evidently occurred because the actual writing was a difficulty for them. On the third day we had similar success.... There could no longer be any doubt or thought of its being a mere accident. We had obviously succeeded in finding a more natural and inspiring method than any we had previously tried.

This unfinished story was accidentally destroyed. Tolstoy was greatly annoyed, and Fédka and Syómka, though they did not understand his vexation, offered to stay the night at his house and reproduce it. After eight o'clock, when school was over, they came, and (to Tolstoy's great pleasure) locked themselves into his study, where at first they were heard laughing but then became very quiet. On listening at the door Tolstoy heard their subdued voices discussing the story, and heard also the scratching of a pen. At midnight he knocked and was admitted. Syómka was standing at the large table, writing busily; his lines running crookedly across the paper and his pen constantly seeking the inkstand. Fédka told Tolstoy to 'wait a bit,' and insisted on Syómka's adding something more, to his dictation. At last Tolstoy took the exercise-book; and the lads, after enjoying a merry supper of potatoes and kvás, divested themselves of their sheepskin coats and lay down to sleep under the writing table; their 'charming, healthy, childish, peasant laughter' still ringing through the room.

The story just mentioned, and other stories written by the children, were published in the magazine; and Tolstoy declares them to be, in their way, superior to anything else in Russian literature. It was largely on the model of these peasant children's stories that, years later, he wrote his own famous stories for the people.

The rules for encouraging composition which he deduces from his experience are these:

(1) To offer as large and varied a choice of themes as possible; not inventing them specially for the children, but offering such as most interest the teacher and seem to him most important.

(2) To give children stories written by children to read, and to offer only children's compositions as models; because these are juster, finer and more moral than those written by adults.

(3) (Specially important.) Never, when looking through the compositions, make any remarks to the children about the neatness of the exercise-books, the handwriting, or the spelling; nor, above all, about the construction of the sentences, or about logic.

(4) Since the difficulty of composition lies not in size nor in subject, nor in correctness of language, but in the mechanism of the work, which consists: (a) in choosing one out of the large number of thoughts and images that offer themselves; (b) in choosing words wherewith to clothe it; (c) in remembering it and finding a fitting place for it; (d) in remembering what has already been written, so as not to repeat anything or omit anything, and in finding a way of joining up what has preceded to what succeeds; (e) and finally in so managing that while thinking and writing at one and the same time, the one operation shall not hamper the other,—I, having these things in view, proceeded as follows.

At first I took upon myself some of these sides of the work, transferring them gradually to the pupils. At first, out of the thoughts and images suggested, I chose for them those which seemed to me best, and I kept these in mind and indicated suitable places to insert them, and I looked over what had been written to avoid repetitions, and I did the writing myself, letting them merely clothe the thoughts and images in words. Afterwards I let them select, and then let them look over what had been written, and finally they took on themselves the actual writing....

One of the profoundest convictions impressed on Tolstoy's mind by his educational experiments was that the peasants and their children have a large share of artistic capacity, and that art is immensely important because of its humanising effect on them, and because it arouses and trains their faculties. Unfortunately the works: literary, poetic, dramatic, pictorial and plastic, now produced, are being produced expressly for people possessed of leisure, wealth, and a special, artificial training, and are therefore useless to the people. This deflection of art from the service of the masses of whom there are millions, to the delectation of the classes of whom there are but thousands, appears to him to be a very great evil.

He says with reference to two realms of art which he had loved passionately, and with which he was specially familiar: music and poetry, that he noticed that the demands of the masses were more legitimate than the demands of the classes.

Terrible to say, I came to the conviction that all that we have done in those two departments has been done along a false and exceptional path, which lacks importance, has no future, and is insignificant in comparison with the demands upon, and even with the samples of, those same arts which we find put forward by the people. I became convinced that such lyrical compositions as, for example, Poúshkin's 'I remember the marvellous moment,' and such musical productions as Beethoven's Last Symphony, are not so absolutely and universally good as the song of 'Willy the Steward' or the melody of 'Floating down the river, Mother Vólga'; and that Poúshkin and Beethoven please us, not because they are absolutely beautiful, but because we are as spoiled as they, and because they flatter our abnormal irritability and weakness. How common it is to hear the empty and stale paradox, that to understand the beautiful, a preparation is necessary! Who said so? Why? What proves it? It is only a shift, a loophole, to escape from the hopeless position to which the false direction of our art, produced for one class alone, has led us. Why are the beauty of the sun and of the human face, and the beauty of the sounds of a folk-song, and of deeds of love and self-sacrifice, accessible to every one, and why do they demand no preparation?

For years I vainly strove to make my pupils feel the poetic beauties of Poúshkin and of our whole literature, and a similar attempt is being made by innumerable teachers not in Russia alone; and if these teachers notice the results of their efforts, and will be frank about the matter, they will admit that the chief result of this attempt to develop poetic feeling, is to kill it; and that it is just those pupils whose natures are most poetic who show most aversion to such commentaries....

I will try to sum up all that I have said above. In reply to the question: Do people need the beaux arts? pedagogues usually grow timid and confused (only Plato decided the matter boldly in the negative). They say: 'Art is needed, but with certain limitations; and to make it possible for all to become artists would be bad for the social structure. Certain arts and certain degrees of art can only exist in a certain class of society. The arts must have their special servants, entirely devoted to them,' They say: 'It should be possible for those who are greatly gifted to escape from among the people and devote themselves completely to the service of art.' That is the greatest concession pedagogy makes to the right of each individual to become what he likes.

But I consider that to be all wrong. I think that a need to enjoy art and to serve art, is inherent in every human being, to whatever race or class he may belong; and that this need has its right and should be satisfied. Taking that position as an axiom, I say that if the enjoyment and production of art by every one, presents inconveniences and inconsistencies, the reason lies in the character and direction art has taken: about which we must be on our guard, lest we foist anything false on the rising generation, and lest we prevent it from producing something new, both as to form and as to matter.

Tolstoy goes so far as to doubt whether, so long as no suitable literature is produced for the people, it is even worth their while to learn to read.

Looking closer at the results of the rudiments in the form in which they are supplied to the masses, I think most people will decide that the rudiments do more harm than good, taking into account the prolonged compulsion, the disproportionate development of memory, the false conception of the completeness of science, the aversion to further education, the false vanity, and the habit of meaningless reading acquired in these schools....

'Let us print good books for the people!'... How simple and easy that seems—like all great thoughts! There is only one obstacle, namely that there exist no good books for the people, either here or in Europe. To print such books, they must first be produced; and none of our philanthropists think of undertaking that work!

Before closing this rapid summary of Tolstoy's educational writings, let me quote a few more sentences which sum up his essential position:

In my articles on Education I have given my theoretic reasons for considering that only freedom on the part of the pupils to select what they will learn and how they will learn it, can furnish a sound basis for any instruction. In practice I constantly applied those rules to the schools under my guidance ...and the results were always very good both for the teachers and the pupils, as well as for the evolution of new methods; and this I assert boldly, for hundreds of visitors came to the Yásno-Polyána school and know how it worked.

For the masters, the result of such relations with the pupils was that they did not consider any methods they happened to know, to be the best, but they tried to discover new methods and made acquaintance with other teachers whose ways they could learn. They tested fresh methods, and above all, they themselves were always learning. A master never allowed himself, in cases of failure, to think that it was the pupils' fault: their laziness, naughtiness, stupidity, deafness or stuttering; but he was convinced that the fault was his own, and for every defect on the side of the pupil or pupils, he tried to discover a remedy.

For the pupils the results were that they learnt eagerly, always begged to have additional lessons on winter evenings, and were quite free in class—which, in my conviction and experience, is the chief condition of successful teaching. Between the teachers and the pupils friendly and natural relations always arose, without which it is not possible for a teacher to know his pupils fully....

With reference to the methods of instruction, the results were that no method was adopted or rejected because it pleased or did not please the teacher, but only because the pupil, without compulsion, accepted or did not accept it. But besides the good results which unfailingly followed the adoption of my method both by myself and by all—more than twenty—other teachers (I say 'unfailingly' because we never had a single pupil who did not master the rudiments)—besides these results, the adoption of the principles of which I have spoken produced this effect, that during fifteen years all the different modifications to which my method has been subjected, have not only not removed it from the demands of the people, but have brought it closer and closer to them.... In my school... every teacher, while bringing his pupils forward, himself feels the need of learning; and this was constantly the case with all the teachers I had.

Moreover, the very methods of instruction themselves—since they are not fixed once for all but aim at finding the easiest and simplest paths—change and improve according to what the teacher learns from the pupils' relation to his teaching.

The children had not to pay anything for attending the school, and the relations between them and Tolstoy are illustrated by the account a visitor has given of seeing Tolstoy rush through a gate followed by a crowd of merry youngsters who were snow-balling him. Tolstoy was intent on making his escape, but on seeing the visitor he changed his mind, acknowledged his defeat, and surrendered to his triumphant pursuers.

Tolstoy does not stand before the world to-day primarily as a school-master, and even were I competent to deal with the subject, it would exceed the limits of this biography to attempt a detailed criticism of his precepts and practice; but he evidently possessed, as he claims in one of his articles, 'a certain pedagogic tact'; and he is clearly right in his belief that the rigid discipline of schools, the lack of freedom and initiative, the continual demand for silence and obedience, and the refusal to allow pupils to criticise the lessons they receive, have a constantly stupefying effect.

All that he allowed at Yásnaya Polyána was denied to us when I was at Christ's Hospital, in 1868-1874; and I look back on those six years of mental stultification as the most wretched of my life. At the preparatory school in Hertford, so stupefied were the little boys by terror and discipline, that when the head-master (traditionally an incarnation of all the virtues) became grossly harsh and unfair, they could not see what was happening until his insanity was so pronounced that the doctors had to take him in hand: an event that occurred soon after I had left for the upper school in London.

There, one of the masters (who evidently did not believe that 'history is experience teaching by example') in intervals between whacking the boys on their backs or hands with a long cane, used, I remember, emphatically to announce that 'dates and names are the most important parts of history.' A Latin master, a barrister, who was usually busy at some sort of law work when he should have been teaching us, used to set us to learn by rote rules and illustrations which we did not in the least understand. On one occasion the example given in the grammar was:

Opes irritamenta malorum effodiuntur.

Riches the incentives of crime are dug out of the earth.

The top boy had learnt the rule and illustration by heart (which I never could do); but, departing from his usual routine, the master unexpectedly asked which Latin word corresponded to which English. Each of the first twenty-four boys in the class in turn got caned and sent to the bottom; so that by the time I, who had been last, had come to the top, and it was my turn to reply, only one possible combination remained untried, and I was able to announce that effodiuntur meant 'are dug out of the earth.' Unluckily there was another rule that day, and over this I, in turn, came to grief, and was caned and sent to the bottom.

In the drawing class I remember doing the outline of a cube to the master's satisfaction, and being promoted to the shading class. I had no idea how to shade, and the attempt I made was certainly a very bad one; but instead of receiving advice or assistance, my ears were boxed so violently that I should be tempted to attribute to that assault the slight deafness from which I have since suffered, were it not that such treatment was so common at Christ's Hospital, that none of the victims whose hearing may have been impaired, could be sure to which of the masters they owed that part of their preparation for the battle of life.

I feel sure the stultifying effects of such cruel and senseless treatment would have been even more serious, had not the school authorities, by some strange oversight, allowed one really readable and interesting periodical to find a place among the Sunday magazines and other sterilised literature obtainable in the School Library. This one publication, which I read ardently during my school years, was Chambers's Journal. It contained novels by James Payn, and other matter suited to my powers of mental digestion. From smuggled copies of Captain Marryat's novels I also got a good deal of culture: far more, I am sure, than from any of the lessons we endured.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER VIII

Tolstoy's Educational articles, and N. V. Ouspensky, Iz Proshlago.

CHAPTER IX
MARRIAGE

The Behrs visit Yásnaya. Proposal by thought-reading. The Diary. Marriage. Ministers on magazine. The school closed and the magazine stopped. Family happiness. Health. Fet's visit. Sergius born. Children. The Cossacks and Polikoúshka. Bees. Plays. Confession. Saving the hay. Decembrists. Samára. Preparations for War and Peace. Collected edition. Translations. Dislocates arm. Tatiána born. Fears of famine. Sergius (brother) and Tánya Behrs. Nikólsky. Visits Borodinó. Tolstoy at home and with the children. Relations with servants. Masquerade. Moscow. Drawing school. Sculpture. Ilyá born. Pleads at court-martial. Dr. Zahárin. Smoke. Fet's Literary Evening. War and Peace. Schopenhauer. Pénza. Death of V. P. Bótkin. The Countess and the children's education. English nurse. Tolstoy's habits. Visitors. Fet. Tolstoy's ardour. Property. Untidiness. Respect for sleep. Newspapers. Characteristics. Studies the drama.

To one who admires Tolstoy's educational work, it is somewhat disconcerting to see how scornfully he spoke of it sixteen years later in his Confession. But that is always his way: the old is useless and worthless and bad; only the new, the unachieved, the fresh ideal, is admirable. For it, he decries all that the past has produced—including himself and his former work. He makes his points broadly and powerfully, but to understand, we must discriminate, and allow for an artistic temperament tempting him to exaggerate. Let him however speak for himself, that the reader may judge:

On returning from abroad I settled in the country, and happened to occupy myself with peasant schools. This work was particularly to my taste, because in it I had not to face the falsity which had become obvious to me and stared me in the face when I tried to teach people by literary means. Here, also, I acted in the name of Progress, but I already regarded Progress itself critically. I said to myself: 'In some of its developments Progress has proceeded wrongly; and with primitive peasant children one must deal in a spirit of perfect freedom, letting them choose what path of Progress they please.' In reality I was ever revolving round one and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach without knowing what? In the higher spheres of literary activity I had realised that one could not teach without knowing what; for I saw that people all taught differently, and by quarrelling among themselves succeeded only in hiding their ignorance from one another. But here, with peasant children, I thought to evade this difficulty by letting them learn what they liked. It amuses me now, when I remember how I shuffled in trying to fulfil my desire to teach, while in the depth of my soul I knew very well that I could not teach anything needful, for I did not know what was needful.

After spending a year at school work, I went abroad a second time, to discover how to teach others while myself knowing nothing.

And it seemed to me that I had learnt this abroad, and in the year of the peasants' Emancipation I returned to Russia armed with all this wisdom; and having become an Arbiter, I began to teach both the uneducated peasants in schools, and the educated classes through a magazine I published. Things appeared to be going well, but I felt I was not quite sound mentally, and that matters could not long continue in that way. And I should perhaps then have come to the state of despair at which I arrived fifteen years later, had there not been one side of life still unexplored by me, and which promised me happiness: that was marriage.

For a year I busied myself with Arbitration work, the schools, and the magazine; and I became so worn-out—as a result especially of my mental confusion—and so hard was my struggle as Arbiter, so obscure the results of my activity in the schools, so repulsive my shuffling in the magazine (which always amounted to one and the same thing: a desire to teach everybody, and to hide the fact that I did not know what to teach) that I fell ill, mentally rather than physically, and threw up everything, and went away to the Bashkírs in the steppes, to breathe fresh air, drink koumýs, and live an animal life.

1862

Tired of and dissatisfied with his work, and thinking he detected in himself signs of the malady that had carried off two of his brothers, he set off in May 1862 (accompanied by his servant Alexis and two of his pupils) to undergo a koumýs (soured and fermented mares' milk) cure in the Samára steppes east of the Vólga.

He went first to Moscow, and his friend Raévsky has told how Tolstoy came up to him in the Club there, and mentioned with great indignation and vexation that his brother was playing cards and had lost Rs. 7000 in a few hours. 'How can men do such things?' said Tolstoy. Half-an-hour later Raévsky saw Leo Tolstoy himself playing Chinese billiards (a game something like bagatelle, played on a board with wire impediments) and learnt that he had lost Rs. 1000 to the stranger with whom he was playing! This was, I believe, the last occasion on which Tolstoy played any game for stakes he found it difficult to pay. The occurrence led to the premature publication of his novel The Cossacks, which he had had in hand for several years, but to which he still intended to add a second part. Not having Rs. 1000 (then about £150) available, he let Katkóf, the well-known publicist, editor of the Moscow Gazette and of the monthly Russian Messenger, have the story for that sum paid in advance. This 'Tale of the Year 1852,' as the sub-title runs, is based on Tolstoy's Caucasian experiences. The circumstances which led to its premature publication made the work repugnant to him, and he never completed it.

Among those to whom he mentioned the occurrence were the Behrs, of whom Miss Sophie was already so interested in him that she wept at the news. At their home he was always a welcome and intimate guest, and as time went on he saw more and more of that family.

From Moscow he proceeded to Tvér by rail, and thence by steamer down the Vólga to Samára.

At Kazán he stopped to visit his relation V. I. Úshkof: and from Samára he wrote to Aunt Tatiána:

27 May 1862.

To-day I shall start to drive ninety miles from Samára to Karalýk....

I have had a beautiful journey; the country pleases me very much; my health is better, i.e. I cough less. Alexis and the boys are alive and well, as you may tell their relations. Please write me about Sergéy, or let him do so. Greet all my dear comrades [probably the masters in the schools] for me, and request them to write me of what goes on, and of how they are getting on....

In another letter, dated 28th June 1862, he wrote:

It is now a month since I had any news of you or from home; please write me about everybody: first, our family; secondly, the (University) students [who acted as masters in the schools] etc. Alexis and I have grown fatter, he especially, but we still cough a little, and again he especially. We are living in a Tartar tent; the weather is beautiful. I have found my friend Stolýpin—now Atamán in Ourálsk—and have driven over to see him; and have brought back from there a secretary; but I dictate and write little. Idleness overcomes one when drinking koumýs. In two weeks' time I intend to leave here, and I expect to be home by St. Elijah's day [20 July, old style]. I am tormented in this out-of-the-way place by not knowing what is going on, and also by the thought that I am horribly behind-hand with the publication of the magazine. I kiss your hand....

Just when Tolstoy was leaving Karalýk a most unexpected event was occurring at Yásnaya, where his sister Mary was staying with Aunt Tatiána. Owing to the denunciation of a police spy who, among other lies, pretended to have discovered a secret door in Tolstoy's house, the police authorities decided to search his estate; and one morning—to the immense astonishment of the neighbouring peasants—police, watchmen, officials, and gendarmes, under the command of a Colonel, appeared upon the scene! In the school-house a photographic apparatus was found: a thing sufficiently rare in a Russian village in those days to evoke the suspicious inquiries of the gendarme officer, to whom one of the student-teachers chaffingly volunteered the information that it was kept to photograph Herzen (the celebrated exile, then living in London); but nowhere were any secret doors found.

The floors of the stables were broken up with crowbars to see if anything was hidden there. The pond was dragged, but nothing more incriminating than crayfish and carp was found. All the cupboards, drawers, boxes and desks in the house were opened and searched, and the ladies were frightened almost to death. A police-officer from Toúla would not even allow Tolstoy's sister to leave the library till he had finished reading aloud in her presence and in that of two gendarmes, Tolstoy's Diary and letters, which contained the most intimate secrets of his life and which he had kept private since he was sixteen years old.

Finding nothing incriminating at Yásnaya, the representatives of law and order next betook themselves to the other schools working in conjunction with Tolstoy, and there also they turned tables and cupboards upside down, seized exercise-books and primers, arrested the teachers, and spread the wildest suspicions abroad among the peasants, to whom school education was still a novelty held somewhat in suspicion.

On receiving news of this event Tolstoy at once wrote to his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy, asking her to speak to those who knew him well and had influence, and on whose aid he could rely. Said he:

I cannot and will not let this affair pass. All the activity in which I found solace and happiness, has been spoilt. Aunty is so ill from fright that she will probably not recover. The peasants no longer regard me as an honest man—an opinion I had earned in the course of years—but as a criminal, an incendiary, or a coiner, whose cunning alone has enabled him to escape punishment.

'Eh, man, you've been found out! Don't talk to us any more about honesty and justice—you've hardly escaped handcuffs yourself!'

From the landed proprietors I need not say what a cry of rapture went up. Please write to me as soon as possible, after consulting Peróvsky [Count V. A. P.] and Alexéy Tolstoy [Count A. T., the dramatist and poet] and any one else you like, as to how I am to write to the Emperor and how best to present my letter. It is too late to prevent the injury the thing has done, or to extricate myself, and there is no way out except by receiving satisfaction as public as the insult has been; and this I have firmly resolved on. I shall not join Herzen; he has his way, I have mine. Neither will I hide.... But I will loudly announce that I am selling my estate and mean to leave Russia, where one cannot know from moment to moment what awaits one....

At the end of an eight-page letter he mentions that the Colonel of gendarmes, on leaving, threatened to renew his search till he discovered 'if anything is hidden'; and Tolstoy adds, 'I have loaded pistols in my room, and am waiting to see how this matter will end.'

He also remarked: 'I often say to myself, How exceedingly fortunate it was that I was not at home at the time! Had I been there, I should certainly now be awaiting my trial for murder!'

Soon after this, Alexander II spent some time at Petróvsky Park, near Moscow. There Tolstoy presented a letter claiming reparation, which an aide-de-camp undertook to give to the Emperor; and some weeks later the Governor of Toúla transmitted to Tolstoy the Emperor's expression of regret for what had occurred.

It is easy to imagine the effect such an outrage as this police-search would have on a man of Tolstoy's acute self-esteem, and how it would intensify his hatred of Government.

After his return from Samára, he saw more of the Behrs than ever. Fet, whom he introduced to them, thus records his impressions of the family:

I found the doctor to be an amiable old gentleman of polite manners, and his wife a handsome, majestic brunette who evidently ruled the house. I refrain from describing the three young ladies, of whom the youngest had an admirable contralto voice. They all, notwithstanding the watchful supervision of their mother and their irreproachable modesty, possessed that attractive quality which the French designate by the words du chien [lively, full of go]. The service and the dinner were admirable.

Madame Behrs was on very friendly terms with Tolstoy's sister, the Countess Mary; and before he went abroad Tolstoy had frequently, at the house of the latter, played with the children of both families. In 1862 he often visited the Behrs at Pokróvskoe-Glébovo, where they lived in a dátcha (country house) they occupied every summer. He nearly always walked the eight miles from Moscow, and often took long rambles with the family besides. The girls had been educated at home, but Sophia Andréyevna, the second daughter, had passed a University examination entitling her to the diploma qualifying to teach both in private and in State schools.

We may judge of Tolstoy's state of mind at this time by an entry in his Diary, dated 23rd August: 'I am afraid of myself. What if this be only a desire for love and not real love? I try to notice only her weak points, but yet I love.' And again, 'I rose in good health, with a particularly clear head, and wrote easily, though the matter was feeble. Then I felt more sad than I have done for a long time. I have no friends at all. I am alone. I had friends when I served Mammon, but have none when I serve truth.'

On 26th August he notes that Sónya (Miss Sophia Behrs) gave him a story to read, written by herself, and her description of the hero as a man of 'unusually unattractive appearance, and changeable convictions' hit him hard; but he was relieved to find that it was not meant for him.

On his thirty-fourth birthday, 28th August 1862 (old style) he jotted down in his Diary the words: 'Ugly mug! Do not think of marriage; your calling is of another kind.'

About this time the Behrs paid a two weeks' visit to Madame Behrs' father's estate of Ívitsa, some thirty miles from Yásnaya, and en route they stopped a couple of days at Yásnaya to visit the Countess Mary. The day after their arrival a picnic party was arranged with some neighbours. It was haymaking time, and there was much haystack climbing by the picknickers. The general impression was that Tolstoy was in love with Lisa, the eldest Miss Behrs: this opinion being fostered by the idea, then common in Russia, that an elder daughter should be disposed of before a younger daughter may be courted.

A few days later Tolstoy followed the Behrs to Ívitsa; and here the scene occurred which he has utilised in Anna Karénina when describing Lévin's proposal to Kitty—a scene in which something approaching thought-reading takes place.

Sitting at a card-table with Miss Sophia Behrs, Tolstoy wrote the initial letters of the sentence:

'In your family a false opinion exists about me and your sister Lisa; you and Tánitchka should destroy it.'

Miss Sophia read the letters, understood what words they stood for, and nodded her head.

Tolstoy then wrote the initial letters of another sentence:

'Your youth and need of happiness, to-day remind me too strongly of my age and the impossibility of happiness.'

The nature of the Russian language (with its inflections instead of particles, and the absence of articles) somewhat diminishes the miracle; but the test was a very severe one, and again the girl guessed the words aright. The two understood one another, and their fate was practically sealed.

The Behrs returned to Pokróvskoe-Glébovo in September. Tolstoy accompanied them on the carriage-journey back to Moscow and visited them every day, bringing music for the young ladies, playing the piano for them, and accompanying the youngest—whom he nicknamed 'Madame Viardot' after the famous singer.

On the 17th of that month (the name's day of Sophia) Tolstoy handed his future wife a letter containing a proposal of marriage, which she gladly accepted. Her father, displeased that the second daughter should be preferred to the eldest, at first refused his assent. But Tolstoy was strenuously insistent—I have even heard that he threatened to shoot himself—and the doctor soon yielded to the united persuasion of daughter and suitor.

The bridegroom's sense of honour led him to hand his future wife the Diary, in which, mingled with hopes, prayers, self-castigations and self-denunciations, the sins and excesses of his bachelorhood were recorded. To the girl, who had looked upon him as a personification of the virtues, this revelation came as a great shock; but after a sleepless night passed in weeping bitterly over it, she returned the Diary and forgave the past.

To get married it was necessary first to confess and receive the eucharist. Tolstoy's own experiences in this matter are narrated in Chapter I of Part V of Anna Karénina, where they are attributed to Lévin.

The marriage took place within a week of the proposal, namely on 23rd September 1862, in the Court church of the Krémlin, the bridegroom being thirty-four and the bride eighteen years of age. When the ceremony was over the couple left Moscow in a dormeuse (sleeping carriage), and drove to Yásnaya Polyána, where Tolstoy's brother Sergéy and Aunt Tatiána were awaiting them.

Fet records the letter in which Tolstoy informed him of his marriage:

Fétoushka [an endearing diminutive of Fet] Uncle, or simply Dear Friend Afanásy Afanásyevitch!—I have been married two weeks and am happy, and am a new, quite a new man. I want to visit you, but cannot manage it. When shall I see you? Having come to myself, I feel that I value you very, very much. We have so many unforgettable things in common: Nikólenka, and much besides. Do drive over and make my acquaintance. I kiss Márya Petróvna's hand. Farewell, dear friend. I embrace you with all my heart.

In another letter belonging to the same period he writes:

I am writing from the country, and while I write, from upstairs where she is talking to my brother, I hear the voice of my wife, whom I love more than the whole world. I have lived to the age of thirty-four without knowing that it was possible to love, and to be so happy. When I am more tranquil I will write you a long letter. I should not say 'more tranquil,' for I am now more tranquil and clear than I have ever been, but I should say, 'when I am accustomed to it.' At present I have a constant feeling of having stolen an undeserved, illicit, and not-for-me-intended happiness. There ... she is coming! I hear her, and it is so good!... And why do such good people as you, and, most wonderful of all, such a being as my wife, love me?

It did not much disturb his happiness, when, before Tolstoy had been married a fortnight, an event occurred which might easily have led to very disagreeable consequences. On 3rd October the Minister of the Interior called the attention of the Minister of Education to the harmful nature of the Yásnaya Polyána magazine. This is what he wrote:

A careful perusal of the educational magazine, Yásnaya Polyána, edited by Count Tolstoy, leads to the conviction that that magazine ... frequently propagates ideas which apart from their incorrectness are by their very tendency harmful.... I consider it necessary to direct your Excellency's attention to the general tendency and spirit of that magazine, which often infringes the fundamental rules of religion and morality.... I have the honour to inform you, Sir, of this, in the expectation that you may be inclined to consider it desirable to direct the special attention of the Censor to this publication.

Fortunately the decision of the matter did not lie with the Minister of the Interior, but with the Minister of Education, who on receiving this communication had the magazine in question carefully examined, and, on 24th October, replied that he found nothing harmful or contrary to religion in its tendency. It contained extreme opinions on educational matters, no doubt, but these, he said, should be criticised in educational periodicals rather than prohibited by the Censor. 'In general,' added the Minister:

I must say that Count Tolstoy's educational activity deserves full respect, and the Ministry of Education is bound to assist and co-operate with him, though it cannot share all his views, some of which after full consideration he will himself probably reject.

Other things besides the suspicion in which he was held by the Minister of the Interior, tended to discourage Tolstoy. His magazine had few subscribers and attracted but little attention. The year's issue was causing him a loss of something like Rs. 3000 (say about £450)—a larger sum than he could well afford to throw away. So he decided to discontinue it after the twelfth number. The month after his marriage he also closed the school, which was too great a tax on his time and attention.

It has often been said that the obstacles placed in his way by the Government turned him aside from educational work, but in speaking to me about it Tolstoy remarked that really the main factor was his marriage, and his preoccupation with family life.

Both he and his wife were absorbed by their personal happiness, though from time to time small quarrels and misunderstandings arose between them. So impulsive and strenuous a nature as Tolstoy's was sure to have its fluctuations of feeling, but on the whole the ties binding the couple together grew stronger and closer as the months passed into years.

The Countess's parents used to say: 'We could not have wished for greater happiness for our daughter.' The Countess not only loved Tolstoy dearly as a husband, but had the deepest admiration for him as a writer. He on his side often said that he found in family life the completest happiness, and in Sophia Andréyevna not only a loving wife and an excellent mother for his children, but an admirable assistant in his literary work, in which, owing to his careless and unmethodical habits, an intelligent and devoted amanuensis was invaluable. The Countess acquired remarkable skill in deciphering his often extremely illegible handwriting, and was sometimes able to guess in a quite extraordinary way the meaning of his hasty jottings and incomplete sentences.

One drawback to their almost complete happiness lay in the fact that though active and possessed of great physical strength, Tolstoy seldom enjoyed any long periods of uninterrupted good health. In his correspondence we find frequent references to indisposition. In early manhood, he seems to have distended his stomach, and, especially after the hardships he endured during the war of 1854-5, he was subject to digestive troubles for the rest of his days.

Town life did not attract him. He had never felt at ease in what is called high society; nor were his means large enough to enable him to support a wife and family in a good position in town. Still, towards the close of the year of his marriage, he and the Countess spent some weeks in Moscow.

1863

They were however soon back at Yásnaya. In February Fet visited them there, and found them overflowing with life and happiness.

On 15th May, after the Tolstoys and Fet had by some chance just missed meeting at the house of a neighbouring proprietor, Tolstoy wrote to his friend:

We just missed seeing you, and how sorry I am that we did! How much I want to talk over with you. Not a day passes without our mentioning you several times. My wife is not at all 'playing with dolls.' Don't you insult her. She is my serious helpmate, though now bearing a burden from which she hopes to be free early in July. What won't she do afterwards? We are ufanizing[48] little by little. I have made an important discovery, which I hasten to impart to you. Clerks and overseers are only a hindrance to the management of an estate. Try the experiment of dismissing them all; then sleep ten hours a day, and be assured that everything will get along not worse. I have made the experiment and am quite satisfied with its success.

How, oh how, are we to see one another? If you go to Moscow with Márya Petróvna and do not come to visit us, it will be dreadful offensive. (My wife, who was reading this letter, prompted that sentence.) I wanted to write much, but time lacks. I embrace you with all my heart; my wife bows profoundly to you, and I to your wife.

Business: When you are in Orél, buy me 20 poods [720 lbs.] of various kinds of twine, reins, and shaft-traces, if they cost less than Rs. 2.30 per pood including carriage, and send them me by a carter. The money shall be paid at once.

Fet soon availed himself of the invitation, and after driving past the low towers which mark the entrance to the birch alley leading to the house, he came upon Tolstoy eagerly directing the dragging of a lake and taking all possible care that the carp should not escape. The Countess, in a white dress, came running down the alley, with a huge bundle of barn-door keys hanging at her waist. After cordially greeting the visitor, she, notwithstanding her 'exceedingly interesting condition,' leapt over the low railing between the alley and the pond. It will however be better to quote Fet's own account of his visit:

'Sónya, tell Nestérka to fetch a sack from the barn, and let us go back to the house,' said Tolstoy—who had already greeted me warmly, without losing sight of the carp-capturing operations the while.

The Countess immediately detached a huge key from her belt and gave it to a boy, who started at a run to fulfil the order.

'There,' remarked the Count, 'you have an example of our method. We keep the keys ourselves; and all the estate business is carried on by boys.'

At the animated dinner table, the carp we had seen captured made their appearance. We all seemed equally at ease and happy....

That evening was one truly 'filled with hope.' It was a sight to see with what pride and bright hope Tatiána Alexándrovna, the kindest of aunts, regarded the young people she so loved; and how, turning to me, she said frankly, 'You see, with mon cher Léon of course things could not be otherwise.'

As to the Countess, life to one who in her condition leapt over fences, could not but be lit up with the brightest of hopes. The Count himself, who had passed his whole life in an ardent search for novelties, evidently at this period entered a world till then unknown, in the mighty future of which he believed with all the enthusiasm of a young artist. I myself, during that evening, was carried away by the general tone of careless happiness, and did not feel the stone of Sisyphus oppressing me.

Soon after this visit, on 28th June 1863, a son, Sergius, was born. During the first eleven years of marriage, the Countess bore her husband eight children, and another five during the next fifteen years: making in all, thirteen children in twenty-six years.

But we must turn back a few months to mention the stories by Tolstoy which appeared during this year.

In the January number of the Russian Messenger, Katkóf had published The Cossacks, which Tolstoy had kept back to revise, and had only delivered in December.

In the February number of the same magazine appeared Polikoúshka, the story of a serf who, having lost some money belonging to his mistress, hangs himself.

These stories are referred to in the following letter from Tolstoy to Fet, undated, but written in 1863:

Both your letters were equally important, significant, and agreeable to me, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch. I am living in a world so remote from literature and its critics, that on receiving such a letter as yours, my first feeling is one of astonishment. Whoever was it wrote The Cossacks and Polikoúshka? And what's the use of talking about them? Paper endures anything, and editors pay for and print anything. But that is merely a first impression; afterwards one enters into the meaning of what you say, rummages about in one's head, and finds in some corner of it, among old, forgotten rubbish, something indefinite, labelled Art; and pondering on what you say, agrees that you are right, and even finds it pleasant to rummage about in that old rubbish, amid the smell one once loved. One even feels a desire to write. Of course, you are right. But then there are few readers of your sort. Polikoúshka is the chatter of a man who 'wields a pen,' on the first theme that comes to hand; but The Cossacks has some matter in it, though poor. I am now writing the story of a pied gelding, which I expect to print in autumn. [It did not appear till 1888!] But how can one write now? Invisible efforts—and even visible ones—are now going on; and, moreover, I am again up to my ears in farming. So is Sónya. We have no steward; we have assistants for field-work and building; but she, single-handed, attends to the office and the cash. I have the bees, the sheep, a new orchard, and the distillery. It all progresses, little by little, though of course badly compared with our ideal.

What do you think of the Polish business? [the insurrection of 1863, then breaking out]. It looks bad! Shall we—you and I and Borísof—not have to take our swords down from their rusty nails?...

The bees, which Tolstoy here places first among his out-door duties, occupied much of his time, and he often spent hours studying the habits of these interesting creatures.

Tourgénef, writing to Fet, commented on The Cossacks as follows:

I read The Cossacks and went into ecstasies over it; so did Bótkin. Only the personality of Olénin spoils the generally splendid impression. To contrast civilisation with fresh, primeval Nature, there was no need again to produce that dull, unhealthy fellow always preoccupied with himself. Why does Tolstoy not get rid of that nightmare?

Several months later he wrote:

After you left, I read Tolstoy's Polikoúshka and marvelled at the strength of his huge talent. But he has used up too much material, and it is a pity he drowned the son. It makes it too terrible. But there are pages that are truly wonderful! It made a cold shudder run down even my back, though you know my back has become thick and coarse. He is a master, a master!

Tolstoy was now fairly launched on the life he was destined to lead for sixteen years: a quiet, country life, occupied with family joys and cares. These years followed one another with so little change that the story of a decade and a half can almost be compressed into a sentence. Children came in quick succession, two great novels and an ABC Book were produced, a large orchard was planted with apple-trees, the Yásnaya Polyána property was improved, and new estates were purchased east of the Vólga.

During the year 1863 Tolstoy wrote two plays, which have never been published. One, a farcical comedy called The Nihilist, was privately performed at home with great success. The second, also a comedy, written on a topic of the day, was called The Infected Family. Hoping to have it staged, Tolstoy took it to Moscow early in 1864; but the theatrical season, which in Russia ends at the commencement of Lent, was already too far advanced; and he never subsequently appears to have troubled himself to have it either published or acted.

The Countess Tolstoy's brother, S. A. Behrs (who from 1866 when he was a boy of eleven, till 1878, spent every summer with the Tolstoys) in his book, Recollections of Count Tolstoy, gives much interesting information about the life at Yásnaya. He mentions that it was a proverb about the hard fate of penniless noblemen, that prompted Tolstoy to take all possible care to provide for the future of his children; and the passage in the letter quoted above, about the bees, sheep, new orchard and distillery with which he was occupied, shows how this care was applied.

In his Confession, Tolstoy says of the years now under review:

Returning from abroad I married. The new conditions of happy family life completely diverted me from all search for the general meaning of life. My whole life was centred at that time in my family, wife and children, and in care to increase our means of livelihood. My striving after self-perfection and progress, was now again replaced by the effort simply to secure the best possible conditions for myself and my family.

So another fifteen years passed.

In spite of the fact that I regarded authorship as of no importance, I yet, during those fifteen years, continued to write. I had already tasted the temptation of authorship: the temptation of immense monetary rewards and applause for my insignificant work; and I devoted myself to it as a means of improving my material position, and of stifling in my soul all questions as to the meaning of my own life, or of life in general.

Again, writing in 1903 of this middle period of his life, Tolstoy says:

Then came a third, an eighteen-year period which may be the least interesting of all (from my marriage to my spiritual re-birth) and which from a worldly point of view may be called moral: that is to say, that during those eighteen years I lived a correct, honest, family life, not indulging myself in any vices condemned by public opinion, but with interests wholly limited to selfish cares for my family, for the increase of our property, the acquisition of literary success, and all kinds of pleasure.

(In the one place he speaks of 'fifteen years,' and in the other of 'eighteen years'; but that is his way, and chronological exactitude is not the important matter here.)

After the Emancipation, in many parts of Russia the landlords had more or less serious difficulty with the peasants, among whom stories were rife to the effect that the Tsar intended to give them all the land, but had been deceived by the officials into only giving half; and, for a time, riots were not infrequent. There was no serious trouble of this sort on Tolstoy's estate; but his sister (whom I met at Yásnaya in 1902, long after her husband's death and when she, a nun, had been allowed out of her convent to visit her brother, after his very serious illness) told me that on one occasion the peasants refused to make the hay; and to save it from being lost, Tolstoy, his wife, the members of the family, and the masters from eleven neighbouring schools, all set to work with a will, and by their own strenuous exertions saved the crop before the weather changed.

On settling down to married life, Tolstoy formed the plan of writing a great novel, and the epoch he at first intended to deal with was that of the Constitutional conspiracy which came to a head on the accession of Nicholas I to the throne in December 1825. That quite premature military plot was quickly snuffed out. So little were things ripe for it, that many even of the soldiers who shouted for a 'Constitution' (Konstitútsia) thought they were demanding allegiance to Nicholas's elder brother Constantine, who having married a Polish lady of the Roman Catholic faith had renounced his right to the throne. While considering the plan of his work, Tolstoy found himself carried back to the scenes amid which his characters had grown up: to the time of the Napoleonic wars and the invasion of Russia by the French in 1812. Here was a splendid background for a novel, and putting aside The Decembrists he commenced War and Peace, a work conceived on a gigantic scale, and that resulted in a splendid success.

1864

His attention, as we have already seen, was however not wholly absorbed by literature, but was divided between that and the management of his property. He had during his stay among the Kirghiz in the Province of Samára, noticed how extremely cheap and how fertile was the land in those parts. He therefore wished to purchase an estate there, and visited the district in the autumn of 1864, probably with that end in view. How long he stayed there I do not know, but from a letter he wrote to Fet on 7th October, saying, 'We start for home to-day and do not know how we shall make our way to happy Yásnaya,' we know when he returned. In November he again wrote to Fet, and mentioned the laborious preparations he was at that time making for War and Peace:

I am in the dumps and am writing nothing, but work painfully. You cannot imagine how hard I find the preliminary work of ploughing deep the field in which I must sow. To consider and reconsider all that may happen to all the future characters in the very large work I am preparing, and to weigh millions of possible combinations in order to select from among them a millionth part, is terribly difficult. And that is what I am doing....

Late in that month he wrote again to Fet:

This autumn I have written a good deal of my novel. Ars longa, vita brevis comes to my mind every day. If one could but make time to accomplish a hundredth part of what one understands—but only a thousandth part gets done! Nevertheless the consciousness that I can is what brings happiness to men of our sort. You know that feeling, and I experience it with particular force this year.

The year 1864 saw the publication of the first collected edition of Tolstoy's works, and though they have been already mentioned, it may be as well to give a complete list of those twenty 'trials of the pen' which preceded the appearance of War and Peace, and had already sufficed to place Tolstoy in the front rank of Russian writers. The following are their titles, with the years in which they were first published. They suffice to fill four very substantial volumes.

As I am sometimes asked where satisfactory versions of these stories can be found, I may say that I think the best version of Childhood, Boyhood and Youth[49] is Miss Isabel Hapgood's, and I make no apology for quoting a letter Tolstoy wrote me on 23rd December 1901, concerning the volume, Sevastopol,[50] translated by my wife and myself, and containing the six stories marked * in the above list. I do this with less hesitation, because his letter illustrates the cordial way in which he encourages those who do any work he can approve of, in connection with his own activity:

I think I already wrote you how unusually the volume pleases me. All in it is excellent: the edition and the footnotes, and chiefly the translation, and yet more the conscientiousness with which all this has been done. I happened to open it at Two Hussars and read on to the end just as if it were something new that had been written in English.

One day in October Tolstoy went out for a ride on his favourite horse, an English thoroughbred named Máshka. His borzoi dogs Lúbka and Krylát accompanied him. After he had ridden some way, a hare suddenly started up and the dogs rushed after it. Tolstoy had not come out with the idea of hunting, but on seeing the dogs chasing the hare he could not restrain himself, and galloped after them, uttering the hunting cry, 'Atoú!' The weather was bad, the ground slippery, and the horse stumbled at a narrow ravine and fell, dislocating and breaking its rider's arm. The horse ran away, and Tolstoy, who was quite alone and several miles from home, fainted. When he came to, he managed to drag himself a distance of more than half a mile to the highroad, where he lay in great pain. Some peasant carts passed by, but at first he could not attract any one's attention. When at last he was noticed, in order not to alarm his wife, he asked to be taken to the hut of an old wife, Akoulína, famed as a bone-setter. In spite of all that she and her son Iván could do—soaping, pulling, twisting and bandaging the arm—they could not set it, and Tolstoy continued to suffer the greatest pain.

The Countess, who had meanwhile heard of the accident, reached the hut late at night. She at once arranged to have her husband taken home, and sent to Toúla for a doctor. The latter arrived about 3 A.M., and after administering chloroform, succeeded, with the aid of two labourers who were called in to assist, in setting the arm. On coming to, Tolstoy's profound disbelief in the efficiency of doctors, prompted him to send for another surgeon. After a consultation the two physicians decided that everything had been done properly, and that Tolstoy must lie up for six weeks to allow the arm to recover. When that time was up, Tolstoy asked for his gun and fired it off to test his arm. No sooner had he done so than he again felt great pain. He thereupon wrote to his father-in-law, Dr. Behrs, and on his advice went to Moscow to consult the specialists. These differed among themselves, but after a week's hesitation a fresh operation was decided upon, and was carried out by two competent surgeons. This time it was quite successful, and in due course the patient completely recovered the use of his arm.

Meanwhile the Countess (now nursing her second child, a daughter named Tatiána, who had been born on 4th October) remained at Yásnaya, where her eldest child, Sergius, was taken dangerously ill with smallpox and diarrhœa. This was the first occasion on which Tolstoy and his wife had been separated.

While in Moscow he concluded an arrangement with Katkóf by which he received Rs. 500 (£75) per printed sheet of sixteen pages for the serial rights in War and Peace, which appeared in the Russian Messenger. This was just ten times the amount which, when he wrote his first stories, Nekrásof had mentioned as the highest rate paid to any one for the magazine rights in a story.