In reward for these evening exercises, Tolstoy brought water-colour paints from Marseilles and taught the children drawing.
He often spent nearly the whole day with the children, teaching them, taking part in their games, and intervening in their disputes, which he analysed, proving to them who was in the right and who in the wrong.
There was at this time some mutual attraction between Tolstoy and a young Russian lady, Miss Yákovlef, who was staying at Hyères; but, like many other similar affairs, it came to nothing.
On leaving Hyères, Tolstoy, his sister, and her children, went to Geneva, and from thence he proceeded alone to Nice, Leghorn, Florence, Rome, and Naples. In Italy he says he experienced his first lively impression of antiquity; but very little record remains of this journey, and it is nowhere reflected in his writings.
He returned to Paris viâ Marseilles, the schools and other institutions of which he observed closely, trying to discover how man's intelligence is really best developed.
He was very unfavourably impressed by the popular schools of Marseilles. The studies, he says, consisted in learning by heart the Catechism, sacred and general History, the four rules of Arithmetic, French spelling and Book-keeping—the latter without sufficient comprehension of the use of arithmetic to enable the children to deal sensibly with the simplest practical problems requiring addition and subtraction, though they could do long multiplication sums quickly and well when only abstract figures were given. Similarly, they answered well by rote questions in French History, but, when asked at hazard, they would give such answers as that Henry IV was killed by Julius Cæsar.
He observed the instruction given by the Churches, and visited the adult schools of the town, as well as its Salles d'Asile, in which, he says:
I saw four-year-old children perform like soldiers, evolutions round benches to orders given by whistle, and raise and cross their arms to the word of command, and with strange trembling voices sing hymns of praise to God and their benefactors; and I became convinced that the educational establishments of Marseilles were extremely bad.
Any one seeing them would naturally conclude that the French people must be ignorant, coarse, hypocritical, full of superstition and almost savage.