CHAPTER XXXVII 



WALKS AND TALKS WITH TOLSTOI MAECH, 1894 



REVISITING Moscow after an absence of thirty-five 

 years, the most surprising thing to me was that 

 there had been so little change. With the exception of the 

 new gallery of Russian art, and the bazaar opposite the 

 sacred gate of the Kremlin, things seemed as I had left 

 them just after the accession of Alexander II. There 

 were the same unkempt streets; the same peasantry clad 

 in sheepskins; the same troops of beggars, sturdy and 

 dirty; the same squalid crowds crossing themselves be 

 fore the images at the street corners ; the same throngs of 

 worshipers knocking their heads against the pavements 

 of churches ; and above all loomed, now as then, the tower 

 of Ivan and the domes of St. Basil, gloomy, gaudy, and 

 barbaric. Only one change had taken place which in 

 terested me: for the first time in the history of Russia, 

 a man of world-wide fame in literature and thought was 

 abiding there Count Leo Tolstoi. 



On the evening of my arrival I went with my secretary 

 to his weekly reception. As we entered his house on the 

 outskirts of the city, two servants in evening dress came 

 forward, removed our fur coats, and opened the doors 

 into the reception-room of the master. Then came a sur 

 prise. His living-room seemed the cabin of a Russian 

 peasant. It was wainscoted almost rudely and furnished 

 very simply; and there approached us a tall, gaunt 

 Russian, unmistakably born to command, yet clad as a 

 peasant, his hair thrown back over his ears on either side, 



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