“How wrong it is! Some are inside and the others are not allowed in. When our children were small, Sophie Andreevna always had a Christmas tree, and the village children came to it. Once they gave us the scarlet fever, and after that they were no longer admitted, except a few who were carefully chosen. I remember once there was a Christmas tree upstairs. I was lying downstairs on the sofa (where the library now is), and I was terribly ashamed to think of the children crowding outside and not being let in. I remember I could not endure it, came out, and gave them three roubles, and of course made things still worse--they began to dispute and quarrel over the division of it, and it was revolting, shameful, and painful!” _June 5th._ Yasnaya Polyana. On the day of our arrival, May 27th, Tolstoi talked at dinner about the Decembrists whom he knew after their return from banishment (he is again studying that period). He spoke of Prince Volkonsky:[8] “His appearance with his long grey hair was altogether like that of an Old Testament prophet. What a pity I spoke so little to him then, when I need him so much now! He was a wonderful old man, the flower of the Petersburg aristocracy both by birth and by his position at Court. And then in Siberia, after he had already served hard labour, and his wife had something like a salon, he worked with the peasants; all sorts of tools for peasants’ work were in his room.” Tolstoi does not believe the story about the affair between Poggio and Princess Volkonsky. He said: “I do not want to believe it: such scandals are so often invented and people’s memory spoilt. Moreover, Poggio loved Volkonsky so much that when later (Volkonsky’s wife being already dead) he felt the approach of death himself, he came to Volkonsky to die there.” Tolstoi went on to say: “I made Volkonsky’s acquaintance in Florence at Dolgorukov’s, Koko Dolgorukov, the doctor. At that time it was rare for an aristocrat to become a doctor. It was when Nicolas I. limited the number of university students to three hundred, and Dolgorukov could not be admitted to any other faculty. He was a wonderfully capable man: he wrote poems, was a superb musician, painted pictures. He was married to (?). When I visited them for the first time in Florence, this was the scene I found: his wife and the well-known Marquis de Rogan were playing an extraordinary game: they made a mark on the wall and tried, by lifting their feet, to touch the mark; each tried to lift his or her leg higher and higher. “There was also present the very gifted painter Nikitin. He drew wonderfully in pencil. I remember he had an album and drew Volkonsky’s portrait in it. He also drew mine. I wonder where the album is. If some collector were to get hold of it now!”