I felt awkward then, and painfully shy. I was introduced. I went into the drawing-room, where, fortunately, two or three people I knew were sitting. I did not yet see Tolstoi. Shortly afterwards he came in, dressed in a blouse, with his hands in his belt. He greeted us all. I do not remember whether he spoke to me then. Then I played, and played badly. Of course, out of politeness I was thanked and complimented, which made me inexpressibly ashamed. And then, when I stood in the middle of the large room, at a loss, not knowing what to do with myself, not daring to raise my eyes, Leo Nikolaevich came up to me, and, speaking with a simplicity which was his alone, began to talk to me. Among other things, talking of the piece I had played, he asked me: “Which composer do you like best?” “Beethoven,” I replied. Tolstoi looked straight into my eyes and said quietly as if doubting me: “Is that so?” It seemed as if I were repeating what every one says; but I spoke the truth. Leo Nikolaevich observed that he loved Chopin beyond almost all other composers. He said to me: “In every art--this I know from my own experience too--there are two extremes which it is difficult to avoid: emptiness and virtuosity. For instance, Mozart, whom I love so much, is at times empty, but after that he soars to an extraordinary height. Schumann’s defect is virtuosity. Of these two faults virtuosity is the worse, if only for this reason, that it is harder to get rid of it. Chopin’s greatness consists in the fact that, however simple he may be, he is never empty, and in his most complicated works he is never a mere virtuoso.” I left the Tolstois’ house with a vague feeling of happiness that I had seen Tolstoi and spoken to him, and also with a bitter sense of my own unworthiness. One evening as I approached the Tolstois’ house in Khamovniki I met Leo Nikolaevich, who was going for a walk. He asked me to come with him. We walked in the Prechistenka. The street was deserted and quiet. The few passers-by whom we met at intervals nearly all bowed to Leo Nikolaevich. By degrees Leo Nikolaevich brought me to talk about myself. At that time I was carried away by the philosophy of pessimism; I raved about Schopenhauer. Probably everything I said to Leo Nikolaevich was naïve and silly, but Leo Nikolaevich listened to me attentively and spoke to me seriously without making me feel my naïveté. In passing, Leo Nikolaevich said to me: “The most complete and profound philosophy is to be found in the Gospels.” I remember that at that time it seemed to me strange. I was used to thinking the Gospels a book of moral teaching; and I did not understand that all the wisdom of the most profound philosophy was contained in its simplicity and lucidity. Once I met Leo Nikolaevich in the street. He again asked me to walk with him. We were somewhere near the Novinsky Boulevard, and Leo Nikolaevich suggested we should take the tram. We sat down and took our tickets.