"So on account of your old man I'm not supposed to sleep all night?" growled the cobbler.
He turned to the wall and went back to sleep, but snored no more.42 At ten the next morning, after drinking a few glasses of scalding tea, Arbuzov went to mass while his master, the enemy of the Church, watched the monks working in the fields. A little later a rumor began to spread through the convent that Count Leo Tolstoy was there incognito, among the pilgrims. Some monks questioned Arbuzov, who confessed the truth with a sigh of relief.
A great commotion ensued among the brotherhood. Excitcd palavering of black habits, whisperings into the superior's car. The illustrious guest's baggage was carried forthwith into the first-class hostel, where the walls were hung with velvet. Tolstoy protested that he wanted to remain with the poor. But his eyes were already feasting upon the clean bed, polished flooring, deep armchairs. There were monks bow-
ing to him and calling him "Excellency." "Hopeless," he sighed, and, turning to Arbuzov: "Give me my boots and my good shirt."
After removing his beggar's garb, he went to call on the superior, who, meanwhile, had invited him to dine. He spent nearly two hours with him. Then, as on his previous visit, he requested an audience with Father Ambrose. Thirty or more poor wretches had been waiting five or six days at the hermitage door for the starets to condescend to receive them, if only for one minute, and give them his blessing and counscl. Grouped according to category, they milled about mumbling prayers: the men just outside the door, the women behind the house, the nuns in the entry. Tolstoy asked a few of the pilgrims their reasons for coming to Optina-Pustyn, and wrote down their answers in his notebook: "Will my daughter marry soon?" "I am starting to build a house: is this a good thing?" "Should I go into trade or open a cab arct?"
As befits a lord, he swept by in front of this hoi-polloi and was admitted at once. He spent four hours with the hermit, who was aware of Tolstoy's religious opinions and wanted to persuade him to return to the Church. Wasted effort: Tolstoy was immovable. He even caught the starets in a flagrant misconstruction of a passage from the Gospels. As he came out of the cell, much agitated, lie saw the pilgrims, still waiting humbly, and distributed his small change among them.
The next day he donned his muzhik's costume again and, with his two companions in tow, set off on foot. But he did not feel up to going all the way to Yasnaya Polyana; at Kaluga, he decided to finish the trip by rail. But in a fresh burst of Christian humility, however, he ordered his manservant to buy third-class tickets. I lis place was among the dispossessed. Smiling sarcastically, he recoiled before the fine gentlemen in their white false collars who were climbing into the first-class cars. Ah, the charms of temporary poverty! Before the train pulled out, he wired Sonya the time of their arrival, and spent the entire trip chatting with the peasants sprawling about him on the benches. They were all his brothers!
Nevertheless, at Tula he greeted the coachman Philip, who was waiting for them with a carriage and a handsome pair of horses, with unmitigated pleasure.
No sooner had he arrived at Yasnaya Polyana when he received a letter from Turgenev inviting him to spend a few days at his home at Spasskoye. He went on July 8, 1881, but he had got the date wrong and was not expected until the following clay. Late at night the poet Polonsky, also Turgcnev's house guest, heard footsteps, barking, a shrill
blast on a whistle. "In the light of the candle I saw One tanned and graying muzhik in a blouse giving money to another muzhik. I looked at hirn more closely, but I did not recognize him. Then the muzhik looked up and saw me and said, 'Are you Polonsky?' Only then did I realize that it was Count Tolstoy."43
Turgenev had not gone to bed and greeted his guest with joy. He proudly showed him his remodeled, freshly painted house, but l olstoy was insensitive to the charm of physical surroundings. He wrote in his diary, "At Turgenev's. Nice Polonsky, peacefully occupied with painting and poetry, judging nobody, perfectly untroubled. Turgenev fears the name of Cod, although he believes in him. But he, too, is naively peaceful and untroubled in the midst of his life of luxury and idleness."
To inject a little seriousness into this gathering of aesthetes, Tolstoy told them about his trip to Optina-Pustyn and the new religion he had founded. They listened politely, they offered timid objections, Turgenev's face bore an expression of commiseration and tenderness. Some time before he had written to a friend, "I am very sorry for Leo Tolstoy, but after all, as the French say, everyone has his own way of killing his fleas. . . ,"44 I lis entire being now radiated the same sentiment.
Tolstoy remained only two days at Spasskoye. On July 12 he was back at Yasnaya Polyana, and on the thirteenth, with his eldest son Sergey, he started off for Samara, where he had not been for two years. Sonya was very sad as she went out onto the steps with him. But the huge estate, the forests and the stud farm could not wait any longer for the master's tour of inspection. And then the kumys treatment was essential to his health. Once again (All very well to be a big landowner, but one must be able to get along with the common people!) he bought third-class tickets. At every station there were crowds milling about on the platform, shouting "Hurrah!" But not for Leo Tolstoy: Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich was traveling in a special car in the same train.
When he first reached Samara, Tolstoy's conscience reeled at the wretchedness of the people in comparison with his own prosperity: "July 16. Went to see the horses. Unsurmountable anguish. Idleness. Shame . . ." "July 24. The husband of a woman from Pavlova died in prison, her son died of starvation. Gave milk to the daughter. Patrov- sky, used to be a herdsman—now destitute. Pale, gray hair . . . Conversation with A.A. about the owners: those who do not want to give the land and those in favor of division."
On his land, at any rate, the workers were not idle. Three hundred husky fellows, burnt black by the sun, were scything, harvesting, putting up hay, threshing wheat. The price of horses was rising at the fairs. Tolstoy counted on asking one hundred rubles for a good colt, one hundred and twenty for a full-grown horse of average quality. According to his calculations, the property would bring in between ten and twenty thousand rubles that year.t He triumphantly informed Sonva of this fact, but a prick of conscience prompted him to add, in the same letter, "'I he only sad thing would be if one could do nothing at all for the people around one. There are too many poor in the village. It is a shameful kind of poverty, they are not even aware of it."45 Sonya made her usual commonsense reply: "You know what I think about giving help to the poor. It is impossible to feed the entire population of Samara, which is thousands. . . . But if you see or hear of some man or woman who has no bread or cow or horse or isba, you must give them to him right away."46
Whether engaged in increasing his income from the estate or in pitying those who had nothing, Tolstoy never lost sight of his religious pursuits. Having broken with the Church, he was being increasingly drawn to the sectarians. There were many of them in the region, mostly Molokhans. Tolstoy went to see them one Sunday, and noted: "To prayer with the Molokhans. Heat. They wipe off the sweat with handkerchiefs. Very loud voices. Necks brown and rough as rasps. Greetings exchanged. Dinner: 1. Cold plate. 2. Cabbage soup with thistles. 3. Boiled mutton. 4. Noodles. 5. Walnuts. 6. Roast mutton. 7. Cucumbers. 8. Noodle soup. 9. Honey . . ." These half-literate people amazed him by the simplicity of their customs and the soundness of their reasoning. He discussed the commandments with them and the meaning of the Feast of Cana; he read them passages from his theological studies and was proud to find that nearly all of them understood and approved of his ideas.