See also, in Tolstoy's works. The Decembrists, chap. i.

CHAPTER VI
TRAVELS ABROAD

Paris. Relations with Tourgénef. Albert. An execution. Switzerland. Lucerne. Yásnaya again. The Iliad and the Gospels. Moscow: gymnastics. Three Deaths. Musical Society. Aunty Tatiána. 'Ufanizing.' Emancipation. Bear-hunting. Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. Attitude towards Art in 1859. Tourgénef. Farming. Fet. Drouzhínin. Nicholas's illness. Goes abroad again. Germany. Educational studies. Auerbach. Nicholas dies. Life at Hyères: children. Italy. Marseilles. Paris. Paul de Kock. London. Herzen. Proudhon. Polikoúshka. Auerbach again. Returns home.

1857

Since he took part in the Turkish war in 1854, Tolstoy has only twice been out of Russia. The first time was at the period we have now reached. On 10th February 1857 (new style) he left Moscow by post-chaise for Warsaw, from whence a railway already ran westward. He reached Paris on 21st February. There he met Tourgénef and Nekrásof, with the former of whom he was still unable to get on smoothly. Tourgénef writes: 'With Tolstoy I still cannot become quite intimate; we see things too differently'; and in some moment of anger Tolstoy even challenged his fellow-writer to a duel.[34] Nekrásof appears to have patched matters up, and in March Tolstoy and Tourgénef went to Dijon together, and spent some days there. During this trip Tolstoy commenced his story Albert, founded on his experience with the talented but drunken musician Rudolf, already mentioned in Chapter III. After he had returned to Paris, he was present at an execution, and made the following jotting in his Diary:

I rose at seven o'clock and drove to see an execution. A stout, white, healthy neck and breast: he kissed the Gospels, and then—Death. How senseless.... I have not received this strong impression for naught. I am not a man of politics. Morals and art I know, love, and can (deal with). The guillotine long prevented my sleeping and obliged me to reflect.

Tolstoy has a gift of telling the essential truth in few words, and never did he sum himself up better than in the sentences, 'I am not a man of politics. Morals and art I know, love, and can.' There is hardly any possible room for doubt about the second sentence, and there is certainly none about the first, as his whole life shows.

Many years later, he wrote of this event in his Confession: