Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/68

 It was curious to see Leo Nicolayevitch among "Tolstoyans"; there stands a noble belfry and its bell sounds untiringly over the whole world, while round about run tiny, timorous dogs whining at the bell and distrustfully looking askance at one another as though to say, "Who howled best?" I always thought that these people infected the Yassnaya Polyana house, as well as the great house of Countess Panin, with a spirit of hypocrisy, cowardice, mercenary and self-seeking pettiness and legacy-hunting. The "Tolstoyans" have something in common with those friars who wander in all the dark corners of Russia, carrying with them dogs' bones and passing them off as relics, selling "Egyptian darkness" and the "little tears of Our Lady." One of these apostles, I remember, at Yassnaya Polyana refused to eat eggs so as not to wrong the hens, but at Tula railway-station he greedily devoured meat, saying: "The old fellow does exaggerate."

Nearly all of them like to moan and kiss one another; they all have boneless perspiring hands and lying eyes. At the same time they are practical fellows and manage their earthly affairs cleverly.

Leo Nicolayevitch, of course, well understood the value of the "Tolstoyans," and so did Sulerzhizky, whom Tolstoi loved tenderly and whom he always spoke of with a kind of youthful ardour and fervour. Once one of those "Tolstoyans" at Yassnaya Polyana explained eloquently how happy his life had become and how pure his