The life of Count Lyof N. Tolstoï

Front matter

Class

Book.

Copyright N°.

Preface

There is a vast amount of authentic material for reconstructing the life of Tolstoi'. It exists in autobiographical fragments, in multitudes of letters, in the three volumes compiled by Biryukof under Tolstoi's own directions. There are many leaves from his own experiences in nearly all of his writings — though, as in the case of Goethe's "Dichtung und Wahrheit, " it requires caution to differentiate between what actually happened and what were the figments of his poetic imagination. Even these picture the evolution of his soul, and Tolstoi was far more interested in his soul than he was concerned with his body.

It is the biographer's only duty to gather all the light he can from all possible sources and concentrate it in his lens, taking care that it be not colored by his own prejudices or personality. My chief authorities, aside from Tolstoi's own writings (including a collection of five hundred and sixty- two letters under the title "Tolstovsky Almanakh") are Biryukof (as far as accessible), Aylmer Maude's two- volume Life, Behrs's " Recollections," and Edward A. Steiner's " Tolstoy, the Man."

It would make a list quite too long to mention all the other books and articles which have proved helpful. Lack of space precluded an appendix to contain representative extracts from the recollections or opinions of Julius Froebel (from his "Lebenslauf," published in Stuttgart in 189 1), Eugene Schuyler's Essays, George Kennan's article which Tolstoi' himself verified, President White's Autobiography, D. E. Ovsyannikof- Kulikovsky's Sketch of Tolstoi's activities, and many vi PREFACE

others. Such an appendix would have grown into a volume itself. It had to be greatly curtailed. But all these materials have gone to making the book, which is rather a plain narration than an attempt to rectify or criticise Tolstoi's opinions and theories. One cannot read Tolstoi or about Tolstoi and refrain from forming an opinion. His biographer, even if he completely dissent from his conclusions and regret the course taken by his life, which like a river winds through superb and picturesque mountains, skirts fertile prairies and is shaded by glorious forests, and may also wander into arid deserts, must recognize that it is the same river, however, and must follow it reverently and sympathetically. If reverence and sympathy are lacking, it cannot be a fair biography.

One word must be added as to the spelling of Tolstoi's name. It is absolutely a triviality of transliteration whether it be spelled with a final i or y. Unquestionably the author himself in signing his letters in French or English spelled it Leo Tolstoy. Is it necessary to conform to his spelling of it when it goes against the ratified recommendation of the Society of Librarians? The dieresis corresponds fairly well to the i s kratkoi of the Russian letter. It is the way it was first spelled both in French and in English. It is such a small matter that it seems hardly worth while to mention it. But the question has been raised, and it is well to let the world know that the spelling with i is perfectly correct and has the weight of scientific authority behind it. In the book all Russian words and proper names, unless otherwise indicated, are pronounced with the accent on the penult. Dates are invariably given in new style, the old style being twelve days in the nineteenth century and thirteen days in this century behind the calendar of civilization.

Nathan Haskell Dole.

Boston, October i, 191 1.

Part I Ancestry And Education

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Tolstoi Family i

II. Early Recollections 9

III. Childhood at Yasnaya 17

IV. School-days in Kazan 24

V. The Benevolent Young Proprietor .... 30

VI. A Flight to the Caucasus 39

VII. A Cossack Volunteer 48

VIII. Stirrings of a New Spirit 56

EX. First Appearance in Print 64

X. Spiritual Growth 70

XL The Crimean War 76

XII. The Sevastopol Sketches 81

XIII. Military Life 87

Part II Tolstoi The Writer

I. In Literary Circles at Petersburg .... 93

II. An Experimental Love Affair 10 1

III. First Journey Abroad no

IV. Events of the Year 1858 126

V. Phases of Inner Development 136

VI. Second Journey Abroad 141

VII. Educational Studies Abroad 149

VIII. The Quarrel with Turgenief 160

IX. An Umpire of Peace .169

X. Educational Activities 174

XL Collisions with Officials 182

vii viii CONTENTS

Part III Family Life

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Marriage 191

II. "War and Peace' ' 198

III. Characteristics 205

IV. Historical Fiction 215

V. Life in the Steppe 228

VI. Educational Methods 236

VII. "Anna Karenina" 241

VIII. Tolstoi and Music 249

IX. Changing Views 264

Part IV The Theologian

I. Theological Studies 270

II. A Pilgrimage 278

III. Arguments Resulting from Diverging Views. 281

IV. Slumming in Moscow 285

V. New Acquaintances 290

VI. Manual Labor 295

VII. The Crime of Property 300

VIII. Literature for the Masses 304

IX. Change of Personality 318

X. Activities of 1887-88 322

XI. "The Kreutzer Sonata" 329

XII. Rules for Perfection 335

XIII. Famine Relief . . 340

XIV. Public Utterances 347

XV. The Dukhobors 352

XVI. Tolstoi and Art 360

Part V The Excommunicated Teacher

I. Tolstoi and the Holy Synod 367

II. Popular Ovations 374

III. A Winter in the Crimea 379

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER PAGE

IV. Later Writings 384

V. Visits to an Insane Asylum 392

VI. " Titan entangled in Foul Circumstance' ' . 397

VII. The Wounded Lion seeks a Lair 402

VIII. The Funeral 407

IX. Estimates of Tolstoi 414

APPENDICES

I. Chronology of the Life and Writings of

II. Tolstoian Colonies 443

III. Tolstoi in the Eyes of his Contemporaries. ,447

Index 455

ILLUSTRATIONS

Count Lyof Nikolayevitch Tolstoi Frontispiece^

OPP. PAGE

Pyotr Andreyevitch Tolstoi, the First Count Tolstoi . . 4^

The Tolstoi Home at Yasnaya Polyana 12^

Avenue of Birch Trees at Yasnaya Polyana 18

Entrance to the Park at Yasnaya Polyana 26^

Count Tolstoi in 1857 n6 v

Count Tolstoi in i860 138 **

Count Tolstoi in 1862 170 \s

The House at Yasnaya Polyana used as a School. . . . 180 v^

Countess Tolstaya in i860, before her Marriage .... 192 ^

Ivan Turgenief 268^

Count Tolstoi's Favorite Exercise 282 ^

Gay's Portrait of Count Tolstoi 288 <

House of Count Tolstoi in Moscow 296 **

One of the Most Striking Portraits of Count Tolstoi . . 302 i<

Recreation at Yasnaya Polyana 308 ^

Count Tolstoi Plowing 314 v "

Count Tolstoi in His Work-room 332*^

The Tolstoi Family dining in the Open Air. ..... 338 ^

Count and Countess Tolstoi in 1895 35^

Facsimile of a Corrected Proof 372^

Tchekof and Count Tolstoi during the Crimean Visit . 380^

Count Tolstoi and William J. Bryan 390 y*

A Late Portrait of Count Tolstoi 400 ^

The Beginning of One of the "Evening Stories". . . . 418^

xi

THE LIFE OF COUNT LYOF NIKOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOI

Part I Ancestry And Education

I

THE TOLSTOI FAMILY

Beyond the reign of Peter the Great nothing is definitely known of the origin of the Tolstoi family. The name itself signifies "stout." In all countries epithets based on personal characteristics, at first used as nicknames, become accepted and are then handed down as surnames, often dignified with titles of nobility. Whether the epithet "stout" came from a German ancestor called Dick or Dickmann, or was jocosely applied by the Grand- Duke Vasily of Moscow to a descendant of a mythical German named Idris who emigrated to Tchernigof in the middle of the fourteenth century, is a matter of choice between legends.

Pyotr Andreyevitch Tolstoi, from whom the subject of this biography derived in the sixth generation, was born in 1645, the year when Alexei' Mikhai'lovitch, the second Tsar of the house of Romanof, came to the throne. In the struggle between Sofya Alekseyevna and her half-brother, the Tsar Peter, this Tolstoi at first supported the regent; but when her guards, the Streltsui, deserted to Peter's side, Tolstoi did likewise and had his reward. It is said that the gigantic Tsar more than once, when drinking with him, snatched off his wig jestingly, saying:

" Golovka, golovka — Little head, little head, hadst thou not been so clever thou wouldst long ago have come off those shoulders!"

Pyotr Tolstoi was made an officer in the Streltsui, fought in the war against Turkey, and was governor of Azof. He spent two years in Italy and was one of Peter's companions in the famous tour of European shipyards. In the first year of the eighteenth century he was sent as Peter's ambassador to the Sultan Mustapha III. During the strained relations that kept Russia and Turkey on the verge of war, he was frequently illtreated. Twice he was ignominiously thrust into the dungeon of the Seven Towers — an experience commemorated in one of the quarterings of the family coat of arms.

During the palmy days of Peter's favorite, Prince Aleksandr Menschikof, Tolstoi served as minister of state and played a shameful part in enticing the young Tsesarevitch Aleksei back to Russia from the Italian castle of Sant' Elmo, where he was in hiding with his Finnish mistress Afrosinia. He was present at the secret trial, torture, and execution of the unhappy prince, and was again rewarded with large estates and promotion to the head of the secret chancellery. Yekaterina granted him the title of graf or count in the new order of nobility. It was but a brief honor, for within two years he incurred the ill-will of the all-powerful Menschikof and was stripped of office, title, and estates and banished for life to the Solovetsky Monastery, situated on a lonely island in the White Sea, where he died at the age of eighty-four. He left a diary of his sojourn in Italy, a detailed account of the Black Sea, and a translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses." His son Ivan Petrovitch was president of the court, but shared in his downfall and banishment.

The title was restored to his grandson, Tolstoi's greatgrandfather. Since it was inherited impartially by all descendants, as is the custom in European countries ex-

THE TOLSTOI FAMILY 3

cept England, it has had many representatives. One was Count Feodor Petrovitch Tolstoi', a well-known artist and vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Arts, while his nephew Count Aleksei* Konstantinovitch Tolstoi (1818-1875) was a famous poet and novelist, whose dramatic trilogy depicting the epoch of Ivan the Terrible and his successor Boris Godunof has been produced on the Russian stage with barbaric splendor. Another was Count Pyotr Aleksandrovitch (1761-1844), who served with distinction under Suvorof and became the governor of a Department; still another was Count Dmitry Andreyevitch (1823-1889), who was Procurator of the Holy Synod, Minister of Education ; and Minister of the Interior, and a strong reactionary in all his views and measures. He wrote a book entitled " Romanism in Russia."

Tolstoi's paternal grandfather, Count Ilya Andreyevitch, married Princess Pelageya Nikolayevna Gortchakova. She was an heiress, but their united fortunes were not sufficient to keep up the extravagant style in which they lived — fetes, theatricals, musicales, balls, banquets, and excursions; and the count's easy-going generosities, his speculations and habit of gambling for high stakes were his ruin. He got himself appointed Governor of Kazan, that half-barbaric city near the Volga, four hundred and sixty miles east of Moscow. He won the reputation of not accepting bribes, though his w r ife was not above slyly taking gifts. Certain of his characteristics seem to have made him the prototype of Count Ilya Andreyevitch Rostof in "War and Peace."

His only son, Nikolai (1 797-1829), when seventeen, at the time of the French invasion, entered the army and was appointed adjutant to his mother's cousin, Prince Andrei Gortchakof. In 18 14 he was sent with dispatches to Petersburg, and on his way back to rejoin the army in Germany was taken prisoner by the French and carried to Paris, where, until the Russian army appeared in 181 5, he lived in comparative comfort thanks to a supply of gold which his orderly had managed to keep secreted in his boots.

He attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel and at the end of the war went back to Kazan. His father, still governor, died in 1820; and in order to recoup the fallen fortunes of his family and provide for his aged mother, who was accustomed to a life of luxury, he married the plain but rich Princess Mariya Volkonskaya. This arrangement seems to be paralleled in " War and Peace," where young Nikolai* Ilyitch renounces his beloved cousin Sofiya and marries the elderly but enormously wealthy Princess Mariya Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya.

She was the only daughter of Prince Nikolai Volkonsky, of a family that harked back to Rurik the Varyag, founder of the Russian Empire. Prince Nikolai had been commander-in-chief of the army, but when he scornfully refused to marry the all-powerful Potyomkin's niece and mistress, Varvara Engelhardt, he lost favor and position. That lady married Prince Sergyei' Galitsuin, and Tolstoi relates how the whirligig of time brought it about that one of her ten sons was betrothed from childhood to the Princess Mariya but died prematurely.

Prince Nikolai's wife was the Princess Yekaterina Trubetskaya. He lived in proud isolation on his estate of Yasnaya Polyana, that is to say Plainfield. Tolstoi says of this grandfather, whom he never knew: "He was considered a very strict master, but I never heard it asserted that he was cruel or that he inflicted the severe punishments usual at his time. Such instances may have been known on his estates, but the muzhiks and servants whom I often questioned concerning him cherished the highest respect for his dignity and ability; and while I have heard my father blamed, I never heard anything but praise for my grandfather's cleverness, business capacity, and care for the welfare of the muzhiks and of his immense household."

An extant portrait of him shows a smooth-shaven face,

Pyotr Andreyevitch Tolstoi, the First Count Tolstoi.

THE TOLSTOI FAMILY 5

with long, aquiline nose, firm, prominent chin, large, sensitive mouth, and curling hair falling below the ears. Tolstoi's brother-in-law in his " Recollections " discovers in the portrait decided resemblances to his famous grandson : "the same high, open forehead, the same prominent organs of the creative faculty and of musical talent, and the same deep-set gray eyes that seem to be gazing into the far distance and from under their thick, overhanging eyebrows literally pierce the soul of the man on whom they are turned. "

Prince Nikolai' died in 1820, the same year as Count Uya Tolstoi, and two years later his orphaned daughter was married to Count Nikolai Tolstoi, bringing to him as her dower the Yasnaya Polyana estate.

Tolstoi, in his " Recollections/ ' pays tribute to his mother, who died when he was only eighteen months old. He says that all that he had learned about her was beautiful. " My mother," he says, " was not a handsome woman, but she was well-educated for her day. Besides Russian, which she wrote correctly, though that was then unusual, she knew four languages, French, German, English, and Italian. She must have had a considerable talent for the arts. She played the piano very well, and friends of hers have told me that she had a remarkable gift for improvising delightful stories. "

This gift of story-telling was accompanied by such shyness that when at a dance she was importuned by her friends to amuse them in that way, she would only do so in a dark room where she could not be seen.

Tolstoi also remarks his mother's self-control in spite of a naturally hot temper. He says that her maid told him that when she was offended she would flush but never speak a hasty word. She was entirely indifferent to the opinions of other people, and this Tclstoi explains by the fact that she herself never uttered any severe criticisms on others. This characteristic was made evident to her son in letters which he had read and in the recollections of her family and friends. He valued it highly and illustrated it by an anecdote which he found in Dmitry Rostovsky's " Lives of the Saints," in which an old monk who had many faults was seen by one of his brethren in a vision holding a place of honor among the saints on the ground that he never spoke ill of any one. "If there were such rewards/' said Tolstoi, "I believe that my mother and my brother would have received them. "

Her married life lasted only about nine years and was calm and devoted to domestic affairs. Her home in the country was remote from neighbors, and only occasionally did acquaintances or relatives come to visit her. She taught one of her husband's sisters Italian and she liked to "do music." She spent her evenings reading aloud to her mother-in-law dull, old-fashioned romances or such serious books as Rousseau's " Emile. " Her husband had a large library of French classics, historical works, and books on natural history. He was away more or less, and when he was at home she did not see a great deal of him, as she intimates in one of her letters to him. It was a typical manage de convenance, where the two parties loved and respected each other. Her husband knew that she still cherished her youthful romantic attachment for her youthful lover. She was also passionately fond of a young French woman, Mile. Enissienne, who afterwards married her cousin, Prince Mikhail Volkonsky.

Count Nikolai Tolstoi, on the other hand, had loved an orphaned relative, Tatyana Aleks£ndrovna Yargolskaya, who, like Sonya in "War and Peace," had been brought up by his parents. She was a beautiful and vivacious young woman, but renounced her love in order that her lover might restore his fortune by a wealthier marriage. After the death of his wife Count Nikolai desired to marry her. "Not wishing to spoil her pure poetic relations with his family," she refused his offer but consented to look after his motherless children. Tolstoi remembered her among all those who surrounded his infancy as "the most impor-

THE TOLSTOI FAMILY 7

tant, a rather short, stout, dark-haired, kind, gentle, and sympathetic woman," who first taught him that "life was not a game but a serious matter. "

After his marriage Tolstoi's father, relieved of pecuniary anxieties, and having paid off all his father's debt, found his chief occupation in managing his great estate and in litigation connected with his father's affairs. Tolstoi says he was not very expert in this business. He was diligent but lacked firmness. After his death his son for the first time learned that he sometimes had his serfs flogged or otherwise severely punished. He held aloof from service during the reactionary regime that preceded the death of Alexander I. and was intensified in the reign of his successor, Nicholas I. He had no relations with government officials but held his head high, "never humbling himself before any one or varying from his lively, gay, and often bantering tone."

Five children were born at Yasnaya Polyana. The oldest, Nikolai, whom Tolstoi' calls "a remarkable boy and later a remarkable man," seems to have inherited his admirable qualities in large measure from his mother. Tolstoi' says: "He lacked the chief fault required for authorship, he was not ambitious; he was entirely indifferent to what men thought of him. The literary qualities that he possessed were first of all a delicate artistic sense, a highly developed sense of proportion, a merry and good-natured humor, an exuberant and inexhaustible imagination, a just and highly moral conception of life; and all this without a shadow of conceit.

"His imagination was so vivid that he could for hours at a time relate ghost- stories a la Mrs. Radcliffeor amusing tales, and so convincingly that those who listened to him forgot that it was wholly invention. "

The next youngest was Sergyei. He was handsome and proud, truthful and perfectly free from self-consciousness. He was always singing and drawing pictures; he was full of gayety, and had the power of inspiring love and admiration.

Then came Dmitry, a strange and eccentric character, who lived a tragic life and died a tragic death, depicted with terrible realism in one of the most striking passages of " Anna Karenina. "

II Early Recollections

Ly6f (or Leo) Nikolayevitch, the youngest son, was born September 9 (August 28, O.S.), 1828. Fifteen months later a sister, Marya, was born, and then the mother died. She had longed for a daughter, and once when a nun from the Tula Convent, Marya Gerasimovna, who had made pilgrimages to various "Holy Places" dressed as a man, came there in one of her wanderings, the countess promised her that if by her prayers she would aid her to obtain her desire the child should be her god-daughter. The nun in her capacity of godmother became a frequent inmate of the Tolstoi home. The daughter herself afterwards became a nun, and Count Tolstoi in the last days of his life, a voluntarily homeless wanderer, came ill and foot- weary to the convent where she dwelt and asked for shelter.

There was also in the household, adopted as a member of the family, a girl named Dunetchka Temeshova, the natural daughter of a wealthy bachelor friend and distant relative of Count Nikolai Ilyitch's, "not brilliant but good and simple-hearted and pure." Tolstoi's father, also, had a natural son who became a groom and in later life used to borrow or beg small sums from his halfbrothers.

Tolstoi says in his "Reminiscences": "The impressions of early childhood are preserved in the memory in some mysterious way, incomprehensible to the human mind; not only are they preserved, but they grow in the unfathomed depths of the soul like seed cast on good ground, and after many years suddenly they thrust their vernal shoots into God's world. "

Many of the characters, relatives, visitors, household domestics, and serfs, whom Tolstoi* brings before us in the picture-gallery of his descriptions are interesting as casting a light on the Russian society of his day. Many of them are plainly the originals from whom he elaborated the personages of his stories. Still others have an importance as influencing the development of his own mental and spiritual existence. This last class has the most importance in a biography. His mother died too early for him to remember her. In his semi-autobiographical story of " Childhood," the mother, Natalya Nikolayevna, is only vaguely reminiscent of his own mother. In reality he imagined her as "a creature so elevated, pure, and spiritual that often in the middle period of his life, during his struggle with overwhelming temptations, he used to pray to her soul, begging her to aid him, and he declares that such a prayer always helped him.

His father died when he was only nine years old; the father in " Childhood" was represented by a neighboring landholder, A. M. Islenyef. Tolstoi in his " Recollections " says: "I remember him in his study where we used to come to say good-night to him and sometimes merely to play with his children. There he used to sit on a leather divan, with a pipe in his mouth. Sometimes he would caress us; sometimes, to our immense delight, he would let us climb up on the divan behind his back while he kept on reading or talking with the steward standing by the door, or with S. I. Yazuikof, my godfather, who often stayed with us.

"I remember how he would sometimes come downstairs where we were and make drawings which seemed to us the height of perfection, and again how he once made me declaim to him some lines of Pushkin's which had taken my fancy and which I had learned by heart: 'To the Sea' — Proshchai, svobodnaya stikhiya — Tarewell, free element;' and 'To Napoleon': Chudesnui zhreby sovershilsa: Ugds veliki tchelovyek — 'Marvelous

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS n

destiny has been accomplished: the mighty man has sunk from sight. ' He was evidently impressed by the pathos with which I recited these poems, and when he had heard them to the end he exchanged significant glances with Ydzuikof, who was there. I realized that he found some merit in my recitation and I felt very happy.

"I remember his merry jokes and stories at dinner and supper and how my grandmother and aunt and we children laughed as we listened to him.

" I remember also his journeys to town and the wonderfully fine appearance he had when he put on his frockcoat and tight-fitting trousers.

"But I remember him chiefly in connection with hunting — how he used to leave the house for the hunt. Afterwards it always seemed to me that Pushkin took his description of the departure for the hunt in ' Count Nulin ' * from my father.

"I remember how we used to go for walks with him, how the young greyhounds who followed gamboled through the unmown fields where the high grass tickled their bellies, how they flew round with their tails hanging over, and how we admired them."

After describing how they hunted foxes and how they baited a big gray wolf, he continues his recollections of his father: —

"My pleasantest remembrance of him is of his sitting with grandmother on the divan, helping her to play patience. My father was polite and gentle with every one, but to my grandmother in particular he was always

*"Graf Nulin," a narrative poem of 375 lines, written by Aleksandr Sergey evitch Pushkin. Pushkin, in an autobiographical fragment, tells how he happened towards the end of 1825 to be in the country 7 and amused himself by reading " Lucrece, a rather vapid poem of Shakespeare's." It occurred to him that if Lucrece had given Tarquin a slap instead of stabbing herself, " Tarquin would have been ashamed and would have gone away, Lucrece would not have killed herself, Publicola would not have been driven mad and the world and the history of the world would have been different." This suggested a plot for a poem, and he wrote it in two mornings.

tenderly submissive. ... I remember once in the midst of the game and while one of my aunts was reading aloud, my father interrupting my aunt, pointing to the lookingglass and whispering something. We all look in the same direction. It is Tikhon the footman, who, knowing that my father is in the drawing-room, is stealing into the cabinet to take some tobacco from a big leather folding tobacco-pouch. My father sees him in the mirror and notices his figure as he steps carefully on tip-toe. My aunts laugh. Grandmother for a long time fails to understand, but when she does, she too smiles with amusement. I am enchanted with my father's generosity, and as I take leave of him I kiss with special tenderness his white, sinewy hand."

Neither father nor mother, that is the ideal of that unknown mother, had so great an influence on his life as that faithful friend who took his mother's place. He says in his " Recollections" : "This influence consisted first in the fact that from earliest childhood she taught me the spiritual delight of love. She taught me this, but not in words : by her whole life she filled me with love. I saw, I felt how she enjoyed loving, and I learned to understand the joy of love. This was the first thing. Secondly, she taught me the delights of a calm, lonely life. "

He devotes considerable space to the description of her characteristics — her kindness to the servants whom nevertheless she always treated as their superior, her habit of keeping dried figs, gingerbread and dates and other sweets in little dishes in her room, her skill in music and her unaffected piety.

Tolstoi frequently reverts to the powerful influence exerted on him by his brother Nikolai. This brother had heard about the Freemasons and their secret rites and ceremonies and he had read about the Moravian brethren; confusing the word Moravian with the Russian word muravei which means ant, he invented a secret recipe for happiness: " There would be no diseases, no o

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GO o X

o

H

GO

O

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 13

troubles; no one would be angry with any person; all would love one another, all would become 'ant-brethren/ " He goes on: —

"We even organized a game of ant-brethren. This consisted in our sitting down under chairs, sheltering ourselves with boxes, screening ourselves with handkerchiefs, and thus, crouching in the dark, cuddling together. I remember experiencing a special feeling of love and pathos and liking this game very much. The ant-brotherhood was revealed to us, but the chief secret — the way by which all men might cease suffering misfortune, might leave off quarreling and losing their temper and become endlessly happy — that secret he told us he had written on a green stick and buried it by the roadside on the edge of a ravine. . . . Near this stick there was the Fanfaronof Hill — the hill of the Boasters — up which he said he could take us, if only we would fulfill all the conditions appointed. These were: — first, to stand in a corner and not think of the white bear. I remember how I used to stand in a corner and try — but could not possibly manage — not to think of the white bear.

"The second condition was to walk undeviatingly along a crack between the boards of the floor. The third was that for a whole year we should not see a hare, alive or dead or cooked, and it was obligatory on us to swear not to reveal these secrets to any one. He who should fulfill these conditions and others still more difficult which he, Nikolenka, would communicate later, would have one wish fulfilled, whatever it might be. We had to tell our desires. Seryozha wanted to be able to model horses and poultry out of wax. Mitenka wanted to be able to draw all kinds of things on a large scale like an artist. I could not think of anything except to be able to draw small pictures. All this, as happens with children, was speedily forgotten, and none of us climbed the Fanfaronof Hill, but I remember the air of importance with which Nikolenka initiated us into these mysteries and the respect and awe which we felt at the wonderful revelations. I have kept an especially strong impression of the Ant-brotherhood and the mysterious green stick destined to make all men happy. . . .