And this ambition he abundantly realized. His residence in Baden as the friend of Madame Viardot, and, be it said, of her husband, and his later life in Paris, whither he repaired shortly after the close of the Franco-Prussian War--for he never lived again in Russia--brought him brilliantly before a constantly increasing company of notables, of whom he was at the last easily chief. His gigantesque figure, crowned with that silvery hair and beard, was a loved and familiar sight until he succumbed to a malignant cancer which attacked the spinal cord, and Turgenev passed over, on the 3rd of September, 1883, at the age of sixty-five. A pessimist is one who looks upon the unequal struggle of life and can discern no hand to succor the deserving weak from the rapacious strong. Sitting while a lad in a Russian garden, Turgenev beheld a fight-to-a-finish between a serpent and a toad. Then and there began his doubts of a beneficent Providence, which culminated in his quiet, and never aggressive, spiritual pessimism. In this he is only one with most great Russian literary artists. And, singularly enough, he too passed into a final era of mysticism, though not so completely as did his compeer Tolstoi, as witness that fine symbolical sketch, “The Song of Triumphant Love.” An interesting contrast presents itself in the characters of Tolstoi and Turgenev. The one, aggressively Christian, harsh in the judgment of his opponents, and intolerant of what he adjudged to be error; the other, meek, gentle, considerate, largely tolerant, and quietly forceful. Tolstoi was the lion aroused and warring even when preaching non-resistance; Turgenev, the lion resting with dignified forbearance because of a great serenity within. Both were men of might, yet ethically and artistically at variance. It is pleasant to record, however, that the quarrel which separated them for sixteen years did not prevent Turgenev from responding at once when in later life Tolstoi sought a reconciliation. The interview was charged with amity, but, naturally, Turgenev could not adopt his old-time friend’s extreme religious views. So when they had parted, Tolstoi’s praise was modified--Turgenev was “an unpleasant man”--while the latter had only warm words for the religionist. In a later essay in this series it is recorded how Turgenev from his death-bed besought Tolstoi to return to the field of Romance, in which “thou hast no rival amongst us.” * * * * *