The third part of the article deals with the taxation of the villagers. From one old peasant the tax collectors took his samovar—the brass kettle for making tea—as indispensable to a Russian as a stove is to us. From another, a widow, they took a sheep; from another they took a cow, and so on. One poor woman offered him some linen at the price of two rubles, the amount she needed for taxes, saying that, if she failed to make the sale, they will seize not only the linen but also her chickens, her only means of support. That women play so large a part in these taxations is due to so many of the men having been killed in the Japanese war, or serving in the army. Upon remonstrating with the village authorities, he was told that they were sorry for the poor people, but helpless, that they had received instructions from headquarters to be unsparing in the discharge of their duty. Upon visiting the district chief he was made clearly to recognize that back of his severity lay his ambition for promotion as a reliable, immovable government official.
Felt that all his labors had been in vain.
Little wonder, that the government suppressed the publication of this last of Tolstoy's writings. Little wonder, that the three days spent amid the miseries of the villagers saddened his heart beyond endurance. And still less wonder, that the government's responsibility for it, and the world's indifference to it, even his own family's, drove him to despair, ripened in him the resolve to retire to some wilderness, where the soul would no longer be harrowed by the sight of human outrages and sufferings.
In the midst of such miseries as he saw, he must have felt that the more than half a century of unceasing labors in behalf of the poor and down-trodden, all his renunciations and sacrifices had all been in vain. He must have felt that the lot of the peasant was as bad as ever, that the government was as cruel as before, that all his writings and all his pleadings for a more equitable division of God's gifts had failed to make the slightest impression upon the people, judging by the extravagances within his own family, seeing four courses of delicacies on his own table, at a single meal, two kinds of wine, costly orchids, when, at but a short distance away, men and women, even children, working infinitely harder than any of his own family, deserving infinitely more than any who lord it over them, were literally starving for the want of the necessities of life, were dying in agony for the want of medical care and ordinary comforts, had their last possession taken from them by pitiless tax-collectors for the support of a vast army of soldiers and officials, for the maintenance of a costly and an oppressive autocracy.
Noted his discontent when in conversation with him.
Even as far back as 1894, when he was sixteen years younger than he was at the time of his flight, even then I noted in my conversations with him an undercurrent of deep sorrow when dwelling on the sufferings of the people, an occasional outburst of impatience at the slowness of progress, and now and then a cry of despair, an utter hopelessness of ever seeing a state of society different from what it was.
Those responsible for wrongs charged him with irreligion.
What seemed to vex him most was seeing the very people who were responsible for these wrongs and outrages considering themselves religious, and branding as infamous such a man as he whose sole cry was for justice and right. "Because they mumble so many prayers a day," said he to me, when speaking of Pobdiedonostzief, "and cross themselves so many times, and fast so many days in the year, they consider themselves Christian, as for the rest of their conduct, one finds it difficult to believe that they had ever heard of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Golden Rule or of the Mosaic command" "Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself." Asking me for an explanation of Reform Judaism, and telling him that is was founded upon an emphasis on the spirit of religion rather than on its forms, he replied that it would not be tolerated in Russia, that the mere words Reform and Spirit were quite sufficient to condemn it. The government knows that they who seek the Spirit also seek the Truth, and it is afraid that Truth will overthrow autocracy and hierarchy, blind obedience and stupid ceremony, and will set men free.
Few men had studied religion as much as he.
There are many things in connection with Tolstoy which Russia of the future will wish to see expunged from the pages of its history, and chief of these will be its having branded him as infamously irreligious. Few men have been as genuinely religious as he. Few men have given religion as much thought as he. Few men have written on religious subjects as much as he.