Turgenev turned pale. His nostrils flared. His beard shook.
"I will ask you not to speak like that!" he cried.
"Why shouldn't I say what I think?" answered Tolstoy.
"So you think I am bringing up my daughter badly?"
"I am saying what I think, without any personal allusions."
Fet tried to intervene, but it was too late. Tolstoy sat stonily in his chair, petrified with anger. Then Turgenev clutched his head in his hands, rose from the table and rushed into the next room. A moment later he came back and said to Marya Petrovna:
"I beg you to forgive this scandalous behavior, which I deeply regret."*
He muttered a few words of apology to Tolstoy, and returned to Spasskoyc. Before fifteen minutes had elapsed Tolstoy had also taken leave of his hosts and gone. He intended to head for Nikolskoye, an estate he had inherited from his brother Nicholas. But on the way his rage, far from diminishing, swelled to the proportions of an obsession. He could not go 011 living, soiled from head to foot by this affront. Upon reaching the first stopping-place, Novosyelky, which belonged to I. P. Borisov, a friend of his, he wrote a challenge to Turgenev and dispatched a servant to deliver it at a headlong gallop; in it, he demanded an apology that he could "show to Fet and his wife," or else Turgenev must come in person to give him satisfaction at Bogoslovo, the next relay, where he would wait for him. To this peremptory epistle Turgenev, who had recovered his self-possession, replied, "I can but repeat what I felt it my duty to say at the Fets': carried away by an involuntary animosity which this is not the time to explain, I offended you, without the slightest provocation on your part, and I apologized to you for doing so. I am ready to repeat my apology in writing and I again ask your forgiveness. What happened this morning proves beyond all doubt that any attempt to reconcile two such conflicting personalities as yours and mine is doomed to fail. I perform this duty all the more willingly because this letter will probably be the conclusion of our relationship. I hope with all my heart that it will give you satisfaction and declare in advance that you have my consent to do whatever you wish with it."
These lines might have appeased their addressee had they reached him, but Turgenev sent the note to I. P. Borisov at Novosyelky, thinking Tolstoy was still there, instead of to Bogoslovo, where he was awaiting the reply at the posthouse. The hours passed, and no messenger came, and Tolstoy's anger continued to mount. lie wrote a second letter demanding a duel then and there; not one of those parodies of a duel with "two authors bringing along a third" to fire at each other from a safe distance, taking good care to miss, and then falling into each other's arms and "ending the evening drinking champagne." No, no—a real fight, alone, face to face, with no seconds; a fight to the finish. lie wanted blood, Turgcncv's blood! He chose the place for their final meeting (on the edge of the forest of Bogoslovo), asked his offender to l>c there the next morning, with pistols, and sent to Nikolskoye for his own. He did not sleep all that night. At dawn a messenger arrived bringing Turgenev's answer to his first letter, and then another, gasping for breath, with a reply to the second. Turgenev accepted the challenge: "I shall say, in all sincerity, that I would willingly stand up to your pistol-fire if I could thereby erase my ludicrous words. It is so contrary to the habits of a lifetime for me to have spoken as I did that I can only attribute it to the irritation caused by the excessively intense and perpetual clash of our opinions on every subjcct. That is why, in parting from you forever—events like this cannot be forgotten—I believe it my duty to say once again that you are in the right in this affair, and I in the wrong. I add that the question is not for me to show courage or lack of it, but to acknowledge your right to call me onto the field, presumably in accordance with the generally accepted rules of dueling (that is, with seconds) and also your right to pardon me. You have made the choice that suited you, I submit to your decision."
Tolstoy crowed with victory. He wrote back: "You are afraid of me, I despise you and want no more to do with you."0 Then he sent Turgcncv's two letters to Fet, with a caustic commentary. Fet tried to reconcile the adversaries, but encountered a snarling refusal on cither side.
As the weeks went by, however, Tolstoy came to regret his hot- headedness. Although he continued to resent Turgenev's insulting remarks at the Fets', he admitted that he had wittingly provoked him by contradicting him 011 a point as dclicatc as his daughter's education. "With Turgcncv, full-scale and final blow-up," he announced in his diary 011 June 25. "lie is a thoroughgoing scoundrel. But I think that as time goes by I shall be unable to keep myself from forgiving him." On September 23 he could hold out no longer, and wrote: "I have offended you, forgive me; it is unbearable to have you as my enemy."7
But it was ordained that luck would always be against this pair in their epistolary relations. Turgcncv had gone back to Paris, and Tolstoy, not sure of his address, asked Davidov, a Petersburg bookseller, to forward the letter. But Davidov, although continually in touch with Turgcncv on business matters, forgot the letter, which lay in a drawer for months. In the meantime Turgcncv heard from Kolbasin, a mutual friend and lover of gossip, that Tolstoy was spreading offensive remarks about him and giving out a false account of their quarrel, with supporting documents. Without questioning for one moment the accuracy of this information, he wrote to the person he regarded as his mortal enemy:
"I have learned that you arc showing a copy of your letter around Moscow, the one in which you call me a coward because I supposedly refused to fight you, etc. After all I have done to make amends for those words that escapcd from my mouth, I regard your conduct as offensive and disloyal and I warn you that I shall not let it pass. When I return to Russia next spring, I shall demand satisfaction."8
Even though Tolstoy realized that his letter of apology of September 23 must not have reached its destination, the challenge came as a blow. Instead of becoming angry, however, as he might justifiably have done, he yielded to a wave of Christian charity. Perhaps, that day, he had made some new "rules of life." Or perhaps he wanted to use the incident as a springboard to saintliness. Or perhaps, contemptuous of Turgenev for his concern with the opinion of others, he wanted to prove that when one's name was Leo Tolstoy, public opinion did not exist. At all events, the man who had previously been roaring for a duel without seconds and blood on the grass, now dipped his pen in milder ink:
"Sir, you have called my letter and my conduct disloyal; you have also said that you would punch me in the head. And I offer you an apology, admit my guilt and refuse your challenge to a duel."
Oh, the morbid joy of turning the left cheek after being struck on the right! One knew nothing of the soul's strivings after virtue until one had known that. Now it was the other fellow who must be feeling like a fool, storming around in a vacuum.
Having obtained satisfaction, Turgenev wrote to Fet, asking him to inform Tolstoy that he, too, was giving up any thought of a duel, but still had not received the letter of apology from Davidov. "From this day forward, de profundis on the whole business!"9 he concluded. Fet thought it would be diplomatic to inform Tolstoy of the terms of this conciliatory letter—rue the day! Tolstoy's angelic disposition vanished as quickly as it had come, and after his burst of indulgence, he reverted to his former humor, violent, stormy, demanding. He was not going to allow that higli-castc fop with the graying beard and effeminate nerves to pass judgment 011 him in letters to mutual friends. And everybody who corresponded with him should get the same treatment. Traitors all, phrase-makers, mere products of civilization! ... In a frenzy of exasperation, he wrote to Fet: