He lived his life according to his own light. Excepting God, he bowed to no master. His conscience was his sole rule of right. His law was his own. His creed was his own. His style of dress, his mode of living were of his own choosing. His was above all else himself, not an echo of another. He was the freest man in the most enslaved of lands. His was the brightest mind in darkest Russia, the most democratic spirit in the most autocratic of realms. His peasant garb could not hide the noble man, ennobled by exalted thought and achievement and not by the will of potentate. His peasant labor could not hide the man born to command, not by means of knout or sword or prison but by the law of love and right and truth. As severe with the world so gentle with his own. As fearless as he was in his denunciations of the wrong-doings of government and church and society, and as bold as he was in his reform propositions, so gentle and simple-minded was he at his family table. I had read that two kinds of meals were served at his table, a frugal one for himself and a sumptuous one for the rest of his family. The meal of which I partook was a frugal one for all. I was, however, little conscious of what I ate. I was held spell-bound by the count's conversation which dominated the table, and which was carried on in English, occasionally passing into German or French or Russian. A table incident.