Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/18

 how we ought to live. The result isn't very great, but it is something. For instance, you are arguing with me, and are getting so cross that you are going blue in the nose, yet you don't hit me, you don't even swear at me. But if you really felt free, you'd kill me on the spot, and there'd be an end of it."

After a silence, he added: "Freedom consists in all and everything agreeing with me, but in that case I don't exist, because we are only conscious of ourselves in conflicts and contradictions."]

OLDENWEISER played Chopin, which called forth these remarks from Leo Nicolayevitch: "A certain German princeling said: 'Where you want to have slaves, there you should have as much music as possible.' That's a true thought, a true observation—music dulls the mind. Especially do the Catholics realize that; our priests, of course, won't reconcile themselves to Mendelssohn in church. A Tula priest assured me that Christ was not a Jew, though the son of the Jewish God and his mother a Jewess—he did admit that, but says he: 'It's impossible.' I asked him: 'But how then? . . . . .' He shrugged his shoulders and said: 'That's just the mystery.' "

N intellectual is like the old Galician Prince Vladimirko, who, as far back as the twelfth century, 'boldly' declared: 'There are no miracles