In spite of this occurrence and the unpleasant feeling it occasioned, the two novelists set out next morning to visit Fet, who was not expecting them that day.
While the visitors rested for a couple of hours, recovering from the fatigue of their journey, Mrs. Fet saw to it that the dinner assumed 'a more substantial and inviting appearance.' During the meal the whole party began an animated conversation, and Tourgénef, always fond of good eating, fully appreciated the efforts Fet's excellent man-cook had made. Champagne flowed, as was usual at such reunions. After dinner the three friends strolled to a wood a couple of hundred yards from the house, and lying down in the high grass at its outskirts, continued their talk with yet more freedom and animation.
Next morning at the usual breakfast time, about eight o'clock, the visitors entered the room where Mrs. Fet presided at the samovár. Fet sat at the opposite end of the table, Tourgénef at the hostess's right hand, and Tolstoy at her left. Knowing the importance Tourgénef attached to the education of his natural daughter, who was being brought up in France, Mrs. Fet inquired whether he was satisfied with her English governess. Tourgénef praised the latter highly, and mentioned that, with English exactitude, she had requested him to fix the sum his daughter might give away in charity. 'And now,' added Tourgénef, 'she requires my daughter to take in hand and mend the tattered clothes of the poor.'
To Tolstoy, the foreign education Tourgénef was giving his daughter, who was quite forgetting her own language, was very distasteful; and his feeling no doubt showed itself in his question:
'And you consider that good?'
'Certainly: it places the doer of charity in touch with everyday needs.'
'And I consider that a well-dressed girl with dirty, ill-smelling rags on her lap, is acting an insincere, theatrical farce.'
'I beg you not to say that!' exclaimed Tourgénef, with dilated nostrils.
'Why should I not say what I am convinced is true?' replied Tolstoy.
'Then you consider that I educate my daughter badly?'