Tolstoi said:
“There was her daughter, Princess Volkonsky, there. They all wanted to direct me on the path of truth. I tried to speak with all seriousness; but hardly anything could penetrate through their diamonds and luxury. They now employ the stove-maker who used to come to me to borrow books. And he has been telling them that I said that one should not believe in God, and various other bits of nonsense. I told them that there was nothing strange in my words being distorted. If even from Christ’s teaching people can deduce the rites of the Church, the blessing of war, etc., then it is no wonder that our words are always misrepresented and distorted.
“Then they asked me how I explained the fact that in my family no one followed my teaching. I told them that it probably happened because I lived like a Pharisee, and did not fulfil my own teaching. To this they made no reply.”
Tolstoi said that he saw to-day a review of a new book on Turgenev. The book is partly of a polemical kind. The author gives an account of Turgenev’s quarrels with all writers (Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, Hertzen, Fet, etc.), as if it were his object to vindicate Turgenev and to prove that on all occasions he was right.
Tolstoi said:
“Really, it is strange that he quarrelled with every one. He was a very nice, good man. Only he was very weak, and was conscious of his weakness. Once, I remember, Count Urusov was here, my good friend. There were two brothers, and for some reason people considered them stupid. Now knowing this, Turgenev began arguing with them arrogantly as though feeling his superiority, but Urusov quietly, easily, and confidently refuted his argument. And no wonder: Urusov had his own definite religious convictions, whatever they might be, and Turgenev had none.”
“I was fond of him,” Tolstoi said of Turgenev.
Sophie Andreevna said that Turgenev had loved Tolstoi very much.