Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/501



T was, I think, in 1881, that Turgenief, while visiting me, got a French book, entitled "Maison Tellier," out of his portmanteau and gave it to me.

"Read it some day," said he, with pretended indifference; just in the same way as, a year before, he had given me a number of "The Russian Wealth," containing a story by Garshin, then just beginning to write. As in Garshin's case, so now, he was evidently afraid of influencing me one way or the other, and wished to have my altogether unbiased opinion.

"It is by a young French writer," he said. "Look it over: it is not bad. He knows you, and greatly appreciates you," he added, as if wishing to propitiate me. "As a type, he reminds me of Druzhinin; he is like Druzhinin, an excellent son, a good friend, un homme d'un commerce sûr, and, besides this, he associates with the working-people, guides them, helps them. Even in his relations with women he reminds me of Druzhinin." And Turgenief told me something astonishing, incredible, as to Maupassant's conduct in this respect.

That particular period, the year 1881, was for me the fiercest time of the inner reconstruction of my whole understanding of life, and in this reconstruction those employments called the fine arts, to which I had formerly given all my powers, had not only lost all their former importance in my eyes, but had become altogether obnoxious to me owing to the unnatural position they had hitherto occupied in my life, and which they generally occupy in the estimation of people of the wealthy classes. Rh