He knew from Lavroff that I was a devoted admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky’s studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazaroff. I frankly replied, “Bazaroff is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as much as you did your other heroes!” “No, I loved him, intensely loved him,” Turgénieff replied, with an unexpected vigor. “Wait; when we get home I will show you my diary, in which I noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazaroff’s death.” Turgénieff certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazaroff. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazaroff’s point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. “Analysis first of all, and egotism, and therefore no faith; an egotist cannot even believe in himself;” so he characterized Hamlet. “Therefore he is a sceptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote who fights against windmills, and takes a barber’s plate for the magic helm of Mambrin (who of us has never made the same mistake?) is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the sarcasms of the majority, or even of persecutions, march straight forward, keeping their eyes fixed upon a goal which they alone may see. They search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it—and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a sceptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and deceit are his enemies; and his scepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt, which finally consume his will.” These thoughts of Turgénieff give, I think, the true key for understanding his relations to his heroes. He himself and several of his best friends belonged more or less to the Hamlets. He loved Hamlet and admired Don Quixote. So he admired also Bazaroff. He represented his superiority well, but he could not surround him with that tender, poetical love to a sick friend which he bestowed on his heroes when they approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place. Although suffering from a cancer in the spinal cord, Turgénieff wrote to Alexander III, begging him to give Russia a constitution—this was in the autumn of 1881—but of course to no purpose. The man whose books helped to bring about the emancipation of the serfs died in exile, not even a prophet in the literature of his own country. Yet, because of their poets and prose masters Russia will one day be free, and then Turgénieff’s name will be writ in golden letters as the artist, the patriot. II