When, after living badly at a neighbour's in Toúla, with cards, gipsies, hunting, and stupid vanity, I used to return home and come to her, by old habit we would kiss each other's hand, I her dear energetic hand, and she my dirty, vicious hand; and also by old habit, we greeted one another in French, and I would joke with Natálya Petróvna, and would sit down in the comfortable arm-chair. She knew well all I had been doing and regretted it, but never reproached me, retaining always the same gentleness and love.... I was once telling her how some one's wife had gone away with another man, and I said the husband ought to be glad to be rid of her. And suddenly my aunt lifted her eyebrows and said, as a thing long decided in her mind, that that would be wrong of the husband, because it would completely ruin the wife. After that she told me of a drama that had occurred among the serfs. Then she re-read a letter from my sister Máshenka, whom she loved if not more, at least as much as she loved me, and she spoke of Másha's husband (her own nephew) not to condemn him, but with grief for the sorrow he inflicted on Máshenka.... The chief characteristic of her life, which involuntarily infected me, was her wonderful, general kindliness to every one without exception. I try to recall a single instance of her being angry, or speaking a sharp word, or condemning any one, and I cannot recall one such instance in the course of thirty years. She spoke well of our real aunt, who had bitterly hurt her by taking us away from her.... As to her kindly treatment of the servants—that goes without saying. She had grown up in the idea that there are masters and servants, but she utilised her authority only to serve them.... She never blamed me directly for my evil life, though she suffered on my account. My brother Sergéy, too, whom also she loved warmly, she did not reproach even when he took a gipsy girl to live with him. The only shade of disquietude she showed on our account was that, when he was very late in returning home, she would say: 'What has become of our Sergius?' Only Sergius instead of Seryósha.... She never told us in words how to live, never preached to us. All her moral work was done internally; externally one only saw her deeds—and not even deeds: there were no deeds; but all her life, peaceful, sweet, submissive and loving, not troubled or self-satisfied, but a life of quiet, unobtrusive love.... Her affectionateness and tranquillity made her society noticeably attractive and gave a special charm to intimacy with her. I know of no case where she offended any one, and of no one who did not love her. She never spoke of herself, never of religion or of what we ought to believe, or of how she believed or prayed. She believed everything, except that she rejected one dogma—that of eternal torment. 'Dieu, qui est la bonté même, ne peut pas vouloir nos souffrances.'[38]... She often called me by my father's name (Nicholas) and this pleased me very much, because it showed that her conceptions of me and of my father mingled in her love of us both.
It was not her love for me alone that was joyous. What was joyous was the atmosphere of love to all who were present or absent, alive or dead, and even to animals....
After telling of her goodness and her affection Tolstoy says in his Memoirs that, though he appreciated his happiness with her, he did not at the time nearly realise its full value; and he adds:
She was fond of keeping sweets: figs, gingerbreads and dates, in various jars in her room. I cannot forget, nor remember without a cruel pang of remorse, that I repeatedly refused her money she wanted for such things and how she, sighing sadly, remained silent. It is true I was in need of money, but I cannot now remember without horror that I refused her.
Again in another place, after mentioning her self-devotion, he says:
And it was to her, to her, that I refused the small pleasure of having figs and chocolate (and not so much for herself as to treat me) and of being able to give a trifle to those who begged of her.... Dear, dear Aunty, forgive me! Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait [if youth but knew, if age but could], I mean not in the sense of the good lost for oneself in youth, but in the sense of the good not given and the evil done to those who are no more.
Of Leo's life at Yásnaya at this time, his brother Nicholas gave Fet the following humorous account:
Lyóvotchka is zealously trying to become acquainted with peasant life and with farming, of both of which, like the rest of us, he has till now had but a superficial knowledge. But I am not sure what sort of acquaintance will result from his efforts: Lyóvotchka wants to get hold of everything at once, without omitting anything—even his gymnastics. So he has rigged up a bar under his study window. And of course, apart from prejudice, with which he wages such fierce war, he is right: gymnastics do not interfere with farming; but the steward sees things differently and says, 'One comes to the master for orders, and he hangs head downward in a red jacket, holding on by one knee to a perch, and swings himself. His hair hangs down and blows about, the blood comes to his face, and one does not know whether to listen to his orders or to be astonished at him!'
Lyóvotchka is delighted with the way the serf Ufán sticks out his arms when ploughing; and so Ufán has become for him an emblem of village strength, like the legendary Michael; and he himself, sticking his elbows out wide, takes to the plough and 'Ufanizes.'
In May 1858 Tolstoy wrote to Fet: