\ Baron Maidcl was Tolstoy's model for Baron Kriegsmuth, the prison governor in Reswrcction.
ravelin, Baron Maidel shook his head and said with a smile that, "Anyone could enter the ravelin, but only the emperor, chief of police or governor of the prison could leave it, and every guard in the place knew it."11 Then, with professional pride, lie explained to his guests the new features adopted in the cells, 'lolstoy left him in a fury. As they passed the monument of Nicholas I on Great Morskaya Street, he looked away and said to Stepan Behrs that it was unpardonable for the tsar to have punished the Decembrists so harshly and that by his fault Russia had lost the cream of a generation at one blow.
Always ready to deplore the cruel fate of rebels past, present and to come, lie was nevertheless stupefied, on March 31, 1878, to leani the verdict of the trial of the revolutionary Vera Zasulich. Two months before, she had seriously injured General Trepov, St. Petersburg commissioner of police. Indeed, Trepov was a notorious brute, but who could have foreseen that the tables would be turned in the courtroom and the accused become the accuser, that the jury, bewitched and subjugated, would acquit the defendant and that the public would greet their verdict with applause? Far from rejoicing at this victory for the partisans of revolution, Tolstoy saw it as a dangerous incitement to fresh violence. lie later wrote in his notebook:
"Revolutionaries are specialists. Tlicy exercise a profession like any other, like the military profession, for example (the analogy is perfect). It is a mistake to believe their profession nobler than any other."12
Back at Yasnaya Polyana, surrounded by the peaceful fields, he found it even more inconceivable that politics should lead to crime. "Living at a distance and having no part in the conflict, I can see plainly that hatred between the two extremist parties has reached the point of bestiality," lie wrote to Alexandra Tolstoy on April 6, 1878. "For Maidel and those like him, all these BogolyulxwsJ and Zasuliches are so low that they cannot recognize them as human beings or feci any sympathy for them; for a Zasulich, Trepov and his like are wild animals that can and should be cut down like dogs. This is not indignation, it is open war. Every one of those who acquitted the assassin and every one of those who approved her acquittal know full well that for their own personal safety a murderer must not be allowed to go unpunished; but in their eyes the question is not who is right but who, in the long run, will prove strongest. All of this seems to me to bode much misery and sin. And yet there are fine people on both sides. . . . Since reading the account of the trial and all this commotion about it, I can think of nothing else."
J Pseudonym of the revolutionary Emclyanov, arrested in 1876.
To Strakhov the next day: "The Zasulich business is no joking matter. This madness, this idiotic capriciousness that has suddenly seized hold of people is significant. These are the first signs of something not yet clear to us. But it is serious. The Slavophil madness was the precursor of war, and I am inclined to think that this madness is the precursor of revolution."
He returned to his novel, but without conviction. These Decembrists he was preparing to immortalize may well have been the distant source of inspiration to a Vera Zasulich, whose violence he could not condone. In keeping with his main idea, should he not show what brought men together, rather than what drove them apart? Religion alone could help him out of the dilemma in which he was caught in the conflict between his love of the downtrodden masses and his love of peace.
Under the influence of his new Christian sentiments, he felt a need for tolerance in life as well as in literature. And to prove how merciful he could be, he chose to humble himself to the person he held in least esteem: Turgcncv. The mere thought of that over-refined and pettish European sent a shiver of disgust down his spine. With morbid delight he determined to write to him, out of the blue, on April 6, 1878:
"Ivan Sergeyevich, these past few days, I have been thinking back over our relationship and I was surprised and happy to find that I had lost all my animosity toward you. Please God you feel the same. In fact, knowing how kind-hearted you are, I am almost certain that your hostility died long before mine. If this is true, shall we shake hands, and will you consent to forgive me entirely and completely all the wrong I have done you? It is natural for me to remember only your best features, for you have been very good to me. I do not forget that it is to you that I owe my literary success and I also remember that you used to like what I wrote, and myself too. Perhaps your memory of me will be the same, for there was a time when I loved you sincerely. Honestly and openly, if you can forgive me, I offer you all the friendship of which I am capable. At our age there is only one thing of value: the love we can share with our fellow men; I should be very happy if you and I could have such a relationship."
After seventeen years of vindictive silence, this declaration of affection stupefied Ivan Turgcncv. There was the Russian temperament, all right, quick to anger, confession, debasement and embrace. Not even the most extravagant of his French acquaintances would have been capable of such an about-face. From Paris, where he was still languishing in the shadow of the Viardot family, he replied, on May 8 (20), 1878:
"Dear Leo Nikolaycvich, the letter you sent to the post office to be left until callcd for did not reach me until today. It touched me deeply
and made me very happy. It is my fondest wish to renew our former friendship and I most warmly shake your outstretched hand. You arc quite right to believe I have 110 hostile feelings toward you. If I ever did, they vanished long ago; all that is left is a memory of a man to whom I was sincerely devoted, an author whose first works I had the good fortune to applaud before anyone else, and who continues to arouse my keenest interest with every new publication. I rejoice with all my heart and soul to sec the end of the misunderstanding between us. I hope to go to Orel this summer and if I do we will surely meet again. In the meantime, I wish you all good things and, once again, cordially shake your hand."
On August 8, having written to announce his arrival, Turgenev steamed into the Tula station. Tolstoy and his brother-in-law Stepan Behrs were waiting for him on the platform, and the three set off in a carriage for Yasnaya Polyana, where Sonya, delighted, intimidated and anxious, was preparing to welcome this remarkable guest of whom her husband had said so much good and so much evil.
She was immediately charmed by the tall man with the regular features crowned by a thick crest of silver hair, and the gentle, oily, feminine eyes. His gray beard was yellowed around the lips. His movements were graceful, he swayed slightly as he walked, and he had a thin little voice that contrasted with his imposing stature. Beside him Tolstoy seemed small, clumsy and unbelievably young. The children were agape with admiration at the traveler's suitcases, his velvet jacket and waistcoat, his silk shirt, his paisley cravat, soft leather pumps, gold chronometer and precious snuff-box, and they sniffed the air of Paris all around him.
At dinner he dazzled them with his eloquence. In front of Tolstoy, who was making a strenuous attempt to be amiable, he talked about his pet dog Jack, the hectic and futile life of Paris where the French dismissed everything as "vieux jeu"—the latest fashionable expression —the villa he and the Viardots had bought at Bougival, near which they had built an orangery costing ten thousand francs, and the cholera, of which he was in deadly fear. Whereupon, observing that they were thirteen at table, he said, "Whoever is afraid of death raise his hand!" And he raised his own, laughing. No one followed suit, for fear of offending the Christian sentiments of the master of the house. "I seem to be the only one," Turgenev resumed. Since the night at Arzamas Tolstoy was too familiar with this elemental dread to deny it any longer, but he did not want to resemble his old enemy in anything, not even in this; at last, spurred by honesty or hospitality,