_Metamorphoses_.--Sense and folly are not at all native qualities in a man. In a crisis, a stupid man becomes clever. We need not go far for an example. What a gaping simpleton Dostoevsky looks in his _Injured and Insulted_, not to mention _Poor Folk_. But in _Letters from the Underworld_ and the rest of his books he is the shrewdest and cleverest of writers. The same may be said of Nietzsche, Tolstoy, or Shakespeare. In his _Birth of Tragedy_ Nietzsche seems just like the ordinary honest, rather simple, blue-eyed provincial German student, and in _Zarathustra_ he reminds one of Machiavelli. Poor Shakespeare got himself into a row for his Brutus--but no man could deny the great mind in _Hamlet._ The best instance of all, however, is Tolstoy. Right up to to-day, whenever he likes he can be cleverer than the cleverest. Yet at times he is a schoolboy. This is the most interesting and enviable trait in him. 112 In _Troilus and Cressida_ Thersites says: "Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He beats me, and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise; that I could beat him, whilst he railed at me." Dostoevsky might have said the same of his opponents. He pursued them with stings, sarcasm, abuse, and they drove him to a white heat by their quiet assurance and composure.... The present-day admirers of Dostoevsky _quietly believe_ in the teachings of their master. Does it not mean that _de facto_ they have betrayed him and gone over to the side of his enemies. 113 The opinion has gained ground that Turgenev's ideal women--Natalie, Elena, Marianna--are created in the image and likeness of Poushkin's Tatyana. The critics have been misled by external appearances. To Poushkin his Tatyana appears as a vestal guarding the sacred flame of high morality--because such a job is not fitting for a male. The Pretender in _Boris Godunov_ says to the old monk Pimen, who preaches meekness and submission: "But you fought under the walls of Kazan, etc." That is a man's work. But in the hours of peace and leisure the fighter needs his own hearth-side, he must feel assured that at home his rights are safely guarded. This is the point of Tatyana's last words: "I belong to another, and shall remain forever true to him." But in Turgenev woman appears as the judge and the reward, sometimes even the inspirer of victorious man. There is a great difference. 114