On my leaving him, both he and the countess invited me to meet them next day at the Tretiakof Museum of Russian Pictures; and accordingly, on the following afternoon, I met them at that greatest of all galleries devoted purely to Russian art. They were accompanied by several friends, among them a little knot of disciples--young men clad in simple peasant costume like that worn by the master. It was evident that he was an acknowledged lion at the old Russian capital, for as he led me about to see the pictures which he liked best, he was followed and stared at by many. Pointing out to me some modern religious pictures in Byzantine style painted for the Cathedral of Kieff, he said, "They represent an effort as futile as trying to persuade chickens to reenter the egg-shells from which they have escaped." He next showed me two religious pictures; the first representing the meeting of Jesus and Pilate, when the latter asked, "What is truth?" Pilate was depicted as a rotund, jocose, cynical man of the world; Jesus, as a street preacher in sordid garments, with unkempt hair flowing over his haggard face,--a peasant fanatic brought in by the police. Tolstoi showed an especial interest in this picture; it seemed to reveal to him the real secret of that famous question and its answer; the question coming from the mighty of the earth, and the answer from the poor and oppressed. The other picture represented the Crucifixion. It was painted in the most realistic manner possible; nothing was idealized; it was even more vividly realistic than Gebhardt's picture of the Lord's Supper, at Berlin; so that it at first repelled me, though it afterward exercised a certain fascination. That Tolstoi was deeply interested was clear. He stood for a time in silence, as if musing upon all that the sacrifice on Calvary had brought to the world. Other representations of similar scenes, in the conventional style of the older masters, he had passed without a glance; but this spectacle of the young Galilean peasant, with unattractive features, sordid garb, poverty-stricken companions, and repulsive surroundings, tortured to death for preaching the "kingdom of God" to the poor and down-trodden, seemed to hold him fast, and as he pointed out various features in the picture it became even more clear to me that sympathy with the peasant class, and a yearning to enter into their cares and sorrows, form the real groundwork of his life.