He then took me to a small picture of Jesus and his disciples leaving the upper room at Jerusalem after the Last Supper. This, too, was painted in the most realistic manner. The disciples, simple-minded fishermen, rude in features and dress, were plodding homeward, while Christ himself gazed at the stars and drew the attention of his nearest companions to some of the brightest. Tolstoi expressed especial admiration for this picture, saying that at times it affected him like beautiful music,--like music which draws tears, one can hardly tell why. It was more and more evident, as he lingered before this and other pictures embodying similar ideas, that sympathy for those struggling through poverty and want toward a better life is his master passion. Among the pictures, not to be classed as religious, before which he thus lingered were those representing the arrest of a nihilist and the return of an exile from Siberia. Both were well painted, and both revealed the same characteristic--sympathy with the poor, even with criminals. Some of the more famous historical pictures in the collection he thought exaggerated; especially those representing the fury of the Grand Duchess Sophia in her monastery prison, and the remorse of Ivan the Terrible after murdering his son. To my surprise, he agreed with me, and even went beyond me, in rating landscape infinitely below religious and historical painting, saying that he cared for landscape-painting only as accessory to pictures revealing human life. Among genre pictures, we halted before one representing a peasant family grouped about the mother, who, with a sacred picture laid upon her breast, after the Russian manner, was dying of famine. This also seemed deeply to impress him. We stopped next before a picture of a lady of high birth brought before the authorities in order to be sent, evidently against her will, to a convent. I cited the similar story from Manzoni's "Promessi Sposi"; but, to my surprise, he seemed to know little of that most fascinating of historical romances. This led to a discussion in which he said he had once liked Walter Scott, but had not read anything of his for many years; and he seemed interested in my statement that although always an especial admirer of Scott, I had found it almost impossible to induce the younger generation to read him. Stopping before a picture of Peter the Great's fatal conference with his son Alexis, in reply to my remark upon the marvel that a prince of such genius as Peter should have appeared at Moscow in the seventeenth century, he said that he did not admire Peter, that he was too cruel,--administering torture and death at times with his own hands.