Turguéneff knew the human heart deeply, especially the heart of a young, thoroughly honest, and reasoning girl when she awakes to higher feelings and ideas, and that awakening takes, without her realising it, the shape of love. In the description of that moment of life Turguéneff stands quite unrivalled. On the whole, love is the leading motive of all his novels; and the moment of its full development is the moment when his hero--he may be a political agitator or a modest squire--appears in full light. The great poet knew that a human type cannot be characterised by the daily work in which such a man is engaged--however important that work may be--and still less by a flow of words. Consequently, when he draws, for instance, the picture of an agitator in _Dmitri Rúdin_, he does not report his fiery speeches--for the simple reason that the agitator’s words would not have characterised him. Many have pronounced the same appeals to Equality and Liberty before him, and many more will pronounce them after his death. But that special type of apostle of equality and liberty--the “man of the word, and of no action” which he intended to represent in Rúdin--is characterised by the hero’s relations to different persons, and particularly, above all, by his love. By his love--because it is in love that the human being appears in full, with its individual features. Thousands of men have made “propaganda by word,” all very much in the same expressions, but each of them has loved in a different way. Mazzini and Lassalle did similar work; but how different they were in their loves! You do not know Lassalle unless you know his relations to the Countess of Hatzfeld. In common with all great writers, Turguéneff combined the qualities of a pessimist and a lover of mankind.