After lunch he desired to have a serious conversation with Metchnikoff and took him out driving, he himself holding the reins. On the way he returned to the question of Science. He thought that humanity was so overwhelmed with misery and had so many urgent questions to solve that work ought to be turned in that direction, and that we had no right to busy ourselves with abstract questions unrelated to life. “What good can it do man to have a notion of the weight and dimensions of the planet Mars?” he said.
Metchnikoff answered that theory is much nearer to life than it seems, and that many benefits have been acquired for humanity by scientific observations of an abstract order. Thus, the discovery of the great unchanging laws of Nature give to Man the consciousness of being submitted to logical laws instead of an arbitrary force, and that is a benefit. When microbes were discovered, their part in human life was not suspected, and yet this discovery was afterwards of the greatest service to human welfare since it enabled man to fight against disease.
On the way back, Tolstoï gave his place to his son and himself returned on horseback, an exercise in which he indulged almost daily, in spite of the approach of his eighty years. He still rode splendidly, sitting quite upright, and seemed even younger than before.
After that he went to take a little rest, whilst Countess Tolstoï gave us immense pleasure by reading to us two yet unpublished works by her husband, the charming story After the Ball and the tragic Sergius the Monk.
In the late afternoon a friend of our host, an accomplished musician, sat at the piano and played some Chopin. In the spring twilight the charm of that music filled us with emotion. Léon Tolstoï, seated in an armchair, listened; the lyrical beauty of the sound sank deeper and deeper into his soul, his eyes became veiled with tears, he leant his forehead on his hand and remained motionless. Metchnikoff also was deeply moved, and the effect of music on two such men, the pleasure that it gave them, was the strongest plea in favour of pure Art.
“I do not know what takes place in my mind when I listen to Chopin,” said Tolstoï a few moments later, after the closing sounds had vanished, “Chopin and Mozart move me to the depths. What lyrism! what purity!” Metchnikoff liked Mozart and Beethoven, but Tolstoï thought Beethoven too complicated. As to Wagner and modern music, they both agreed about it, thinking it unintelligible and lacking harmony and simplicity.
Around the tea-table conversation turned on senility, and Metchnikoff developed his theory of the discords of human nature. He illustrated his affirmations by the example of Goethe’s Faust, who, according to him, formed the best picture of the evolution of human phases. To his mind the second part of Faust is but an allegory of the disharmonies of old age. It is a striking picture of the dramatic contest between the yet ardent and juvenile feelings of old Goethe and his physical senility. Tolstoï seemed interested by this interpretation and said he would read the second part of Faust over again, but that he himself would never offer an example of a similar lack of harmony. À propos of Metchnikoff’s theory, according to which the fear of death exists because Death itself is premature, Tolstoï affirmed that he had no fear of death, but added, laughingly, that he would nevertheless try to reach the age of 100 in order to please Elie.
Our train only left late in the night, and, until we started, the conversation never ceased to be animated. In every one of his words Tolstoï’s exalted soul was perceptible, a soul in which there was room but for preoccupations of a spiritual order. He would have given the impression of floating above the earth if his ardent and compassionate heart had not constantly brought him back to the miseries and faults of human beings. The atmosphere around him was pure and vivifying as on high peaks, and the place seemed sanctified by his presence.
That interview had been a meeting of two superior minds, two exalted souls, but how different! The one, scientific and rational, always leaning on solid facts in order to soar and to spread his wings in the highest spheres of thought; the other an artist and a mystic, rising through intuition to the same spiritual heights; both pursuing the same goal of human perfection and happiness, but going along such different roads....
As we took leave of him, Léon Tolstoï said, “Not farewell, but au revoir!” And as we sat in the carriage and started to go, he appeared in a lighted window, as in an aureola, waving his hand, “Au revoir, au revoir!” he repeated for the last time.... The night was calm and beautiful under the immensity of the starry vault, and its greatness was confounded in our souls with the greatness of Léon Tolstoï.