ABSTRACT
FTER the embarrassment of his relations with Valeria, and his disgust with most of the literary world of Petersburg, at first Tolstoy found Paris full of interest and charm. Nekrasov and Turgenev were there; and after a stormy scene in which Tolstoy challenged Turgenev to a duel, but was finally persuaded by Nekrasov to be reconciled, the two novelists departed together on a visit to Dijon. Then Sergey arrived, and Tolstoy surrendered himself whole-heartedly to new and exotic impressions. Having engaged English and Italian masters to improve his languages, he frequented the gymnasium; went often to the theatre (where he saw Ristori) and to the opera; looked at the pictures in the Louvre ; explored old churches and the cemetery of Père Lachaise ; drove out diligently to admire Fontainebleau and Versailles ; stood aghast before Napoleon's tomb at the Hôtel des Invalides, where he recorded characteristically: "This deification of a criminal is awful"; found himself suddenly tormented by doubts of everything ; dined with his Russian acquaintances ; and mildly paid court to the two Princesses Lvov. (Of the mother he recorded : " Lvovis jealous of me, and, Heaven knows why, I am deprived of his wife's agreeable company" ; and of the daughter : " I like her very much and think I am a fool not to try to marry her. If she were to marry a very good man and they were happy together I might be driven to despair." 51)
In order not to miss anything, he went to see a public execution. Byron, whose curiosity had led him, equipped with opera-glasses, to a similar spectacle in Rome in 1817, had observed that "although the two prisoners behaved calmly enough," one of them " died with great terror and reluctance, which was very horrible" ; and the sight had left him " quite hot and thirsty," and with trembling hands. But the impression made upon Tolstoy was of the most powerful of his life. "A stout white neck and chest; he kissed the Gospels, and then-death. How senseless ! . . . The guillotine kept me long awake, and compelled me to reflect," he recorded with the usual understatement of his private shorthand. "What is certain is that henceforward I shall never serve any
government. All governments in this world are equal in the measure of good and evil that they do. The only ideal is anarchy." 51 To his friend Botkin he wrote : " I saw many horrors both during the war and when I was in the Caucasus; but if a man had been torn to pieces before my eyes it would have been less frightful than the manner in which a powerful, vigorous and healthy man was put to death in a second by this ingenious machine.'' 6C Twenty years later, when the scene was still reflected in the mirror of his imagination, he wrote in A Confession: "When I saw the head divided from the body, and heard the sound with which they fell separately into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world held it to be necessary, on no matter what theory, I knew it to be both unnecessary and b a d . . . . " 25
So deep was the shock, that the whole charm of Paris was destroyed for him ; and getting up late next morning feeling tired and ill after a nearly sleepless night, the "simple and sensible" idea occurred to him of leaving the city without delay. With characteristic impulsiveness he rushed off to Turgenev to say good-bye, even shedding tears as he did so-"he has made, and is making, a different man of me"—and caught the morning train for Geneva. Later that day, when he changed into a coach with the full moon shining on it, "and everything standing out suffused with love and joy," for the first time for many months he thanked God that he was alive.
