From Moscow an accommodation train goes in one night to Tula, capital of the government of the same name. The infallible Baedeker advises the traveller to leave the train there, because it is hard to get a team at the next station, Kozlovka, though Kozlovka is nearer to Yasnaya Polyana, the estate of the poet, than is Tula. I follow my Baedeker blindly, because I have always had to repent when I departed from its advice. The German Baedeker deserves the highest credit for taking the trouble to give this information to the few travellers that make the pilgrimage to Leo Tolsto?. For it is not to be supposed that Tolsto? is overrun. His family guard his retirement, and do not grant admittance to every one. I was, in fact, the only stranger who found his way there during the entire week. It was, indeed, a very special introduction which opened the gates to me.

The train reaches Tula at eight in the morning. Thoughtful friends had given me a card in Russian to the station-master to help me to find a driver who knew the way. The station-master could not,[Pg 286] however, decipher the card, and did not understand my French. A colonel of Cossacks then helped me out. He had already been talking with the official, and now asked me if I could not speak German a little. When I assented he immediately played the interpreter. In a few minutes a muzhik was found who, with his small sleigh and shaggy, big-boned pony, had made the journey many times. The amiable Cossack then accepted an invitation to breakfast in the clean station, and we chatted for a while over our tea. He was a tall, fair-haired man, with kindly blue eyes and the short Slavonic nose. His conversation, however, emphatically contradicted his appearance. He was on his way to the Ural, where he was to meet his regiment, and talked about the bayonets of his Cossacks being bent because the men spit the "Kakamakis" (Japanese) and threw them over their shoulders. He was delighted that I was a German, for the Russians think the Germans very good fellows at present. Only the English are a bad lot—"Jew Englishmen!" Leo Tolsto?, he said, was a man of great genius, but it wasn\'t nice that he was an atheist. I interrupted him, laughing:

"I don\'t wish to be personal, colonel, but Leo Tolsto? is a much better Christian than you."

"How\'s that?"

I explained to him that Tolsto? wishes to reestablish the primitive Christianity and is the enemy only of the church and of the priests. The good[Pg 287] fellow was immediately satisfied. If it were nothing worse than that—no Russian could endure the priests. They were all rascals. The missionaries in China had turned all their girls\' schools into harems. Only the dissenting priests led a moral life.

It was the talk of a big, thoroughly lovable child, in whom even the thirst for fighting was not unbecoming. Who knows whether the bullets of the "Kakamakis" have not already found him out! I spoke later to the good Tolsto? of this conversation. He also is persuaded that only right teaching is needed to turn these essentially good-hearted people from the business of murder. At present war is merely a hunting adventure for them. They form no conception of the sufferings of the defeated.

Deeply buried in furs and robes, we glided at last over the glittering snow. The city of Tula, which would have been interesting at another time on account of its metal industry, was a matter of indifference at the moment. We quitted it on the left and struck at once into the road to Yasnaya Polyana. The distance before us was almost fifteen versts (ten miles); our pony had, therefore, to make good time if it was to bring us, over all the hills covered with soft snow, to our destination before noon. A Russian horse, however, can stand a good deal, so I did not need to interrupt by inopportune consideration for animals the thoughts which surged[Pg 288] through my brain more and more as we came near the end of the journey. A meeting with Tolsto? is such an incomparable privilege for me—will fate permit me thoroughly to enjoy the moments? And if he is not the man I expect to find, if one of the great again unmasks before me as a poseur—who appears great and admirable only at a distance—how many illusions have I still to lose? May not his apostleship be merely a self-suggested idea obstinately clung to? Is not his tardy religious bent, perhaps, mere hypochondria, fear of the next world, preparation for death? A look with his eyes must show me. I must learn from the sound of his voice whether my inner ear deceives me when I hear the ring of sincerity in the primeval force of his diction. I know I cannot deceive myself. If the concept I have formed of him is corrected even in the least point by the reality, that is the end of my secret worship.

We turned in at last between two stone pillars at the park of Yasnaya Polyana. Below, beside the frozen pond, we saw a youthful figure advancing with the light step of an officer surrounded by a pack of baying and leaping dogs. Yet, if my eyes did not deceive me, a gray beard flowed over the breast of this slender, boyish figure. He stopped, shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked towards our sleigh. Then he turned back. It was he.

We had hardly reached the house and been[Pg 289] unwrapped from our furs and overshoes by the servants, when the door of the low vestibule opened, and there, in muzhik smock and fur, high boots and tall fur cap, as we knew him from a thousand pictures, Leo Tolsto? stood before us and held out a friendly hand.

While he, motioning away the servants, pulled off his knee-high felt overshoes, I had opportunity to look at him. That is to say, my eyes at first were held by the head alone, with its softly curling gray hair, which flows, parted, to the neck. Thick, bushy, gray brows shade the deep-set, blue eyes and sharply define an angular, self-willed forehead. The nose is strong, slender above, broad and finely modelled in the nostrils. The long, gray mustache completely covers the mobile mouth. A waving white beard, parted in the middle, flows from the hoary cheeks to the shoulders. The head is not broad—rather, it might be called narrow—wholly unslavonic, and is well poised. The broad, strongly built shoulders have a military erectness. The powerful body is set on slender hips. A narrow foot is hidden in the high Russian boot and moves elastically. The step and carriage are youthful. An irony of fate will have it that the bitterest foe of militarism betrays in his whole appearance the former officer. The man in the peasant\'s dress is in every movement the grand seigneur.

We were still standing in the vestibule, which serves also as a cloak-room. The count thrust both[Pg 290] hands............