Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/73

 long, sail-cloth blouse, and how, armed with a bundle of rice, cooked in red wine, tied in his belt, and an enormous linen umbrella, he wandered with me on the mountain paths of Trans-Caucasia; how once on a narrow path we met a buffalo and prudently retreated, threatening the brute with the open umbrella, and, every time we stepped back, in danger of falling over the precipice. Suddenly I noticed that there were tears in Tolstoi's eyes, and this confused me and I stopped.

"Never mind," he said, "go on, go on. It's pleasure at hearing about a good man. I imagined him just like that, unique. Of all the radicals he is the most mature and clever; in his Alphabet he proves conclusively that all our civilization is barbarian, that culture is the work of the peaceful and weak, not the strong, nations, and that the struggle for existence is a lying invention by which it is sought to justify evil. You, of course, don't agree with this? But Daudet agrees, you know, you remember his Paul Astier?"

"But how would you reconcile Flerovsky's theory, say, with the part played by the Normans in the history of Europe?"

"The Normans? That's another thing."

If he did not want to answer, he would always say "That's another thing."

It always seemed to me—and I do not think I was mistaken—that Leo Nicolayevitch was not very fond of talking about literature, but was vitally interested in the personality of an author. The