Many felt offended, in reading this epopee, to see their hero, Napoléon, reduced to such small proportions, and even ridiculed. But the Napoléon who came to Russia was no longer the man who had inspired the armies of the _sans-culottes_ in their first steps eastwards for the abolition of serfdom, absolutism, and inquisition. All men in high positions are actors to a great extent--as Tolstóy so wonderfully shows in so many places of his great work--and Napoléon surely was not the least actor among them. And by the time he came to Russia, an emperor, now spoiled by the adulation of the courtiers of all Europe and the worship of the masses, who attributed to him what was attributable to the vast stir of minds produced by the Great Revolution, and consequently saw in him a half-god--by the time he came to Russia, the actor in him had got the upper hand over the man in whom there had been formerly incarnated the youthful energy of the suddenly-awakened French nation, in whom had appeared the expression of that awakening, and through whom its force had been the further increased. To these original characteristics was due the fascination which the name of Napoléon exercised upon his contemporaries. At Smolénsky, Kutúzoff himself must have experienced that fascination when, rather than rouse the lion to a desperate battle, he opened before him the way to retreat. ANNA KARÉNINA. Of all the Tolstóy novels, _Anna Karénina_ is the one which has been the most widely read in all languages. As a work of art it is a master-piece. From the very first appearance of the heroine, you feel that this woman must bring with her a drama; from the very outset her tragical end is as inevitable as it is in a drama of Shakespeare. In that sense the novel is true to life throughout. It is a corner of real life that we have before us. As a rule, Tolstóy is not at his best in picturing women--with the exception of very young girls--and I don’t think that Anna Karénina herself is as deep, as psychologically complete, and as living a creation as she might have been; but the more ordinary woman, Dolly, is simply teeming with life. As to the various scenes of the novel--the ball scenes, the races of the officers, the inner family life of Dolly, the country scenes on Lévin’s estate, the death of his brother, and so on--all these are depicted in such a way that for its artistic qualities _Anna Karénina_ stands foremost even amongst the many beautiful things Tolstóy has written.