Tolstoi said that Turgenev, in his ecstasy over Pushkin’s description of Lensky’s death in Onegin, said that the wonderful rhyme--_ranen, stranen_--seemed to be inevitable. Then Tolstoi recollected certain of Tyutchev’s poems, whom he rates very highly. I asked him if he knew Tyutchev. Tolstoi said: “When after the Sevastopol campaign I lived in Petersburg, Tyutchev, then a famous author, did me, a young writer, the honour to call on me. And then, I remember, how surprised I was that he, who had all his life mixed in court circles--he was a friend, in the purest sense, of the Empress Marie Alexandrovna--who spoke and wrote French more easily than Russian, picked out for special praise, when he expressed his admiration for my Sevastopol stories, a certain soldiers’ expression; and this sensitiveness to the Russian language surprised me in him extraordinarily.” The conversation arose about writers’ fees. Tolstoi turned to P. Biryukov and said: “I understand fees in the case of a work like your biography (of Tolstoi), but fees to writers for their artistic work always seemed strange and wrong to me. The man wrote and enjoyed writing, and suddenly for that enjoyment he asks five hundred roubles per printed sheet!” ... Tolstoi said: “I became more and more convinced that a sensible man is to be known by his humility. Conceit is incompatible with understanding.” Of conceit Tolstoi said a long time ago in my presence: “Every man can be seen as a fraction, whose numerator is his actual qualities, and its denominator his opinion of himself. The greater the denominator the less is the absolute quantity of the fraction.” 1907 _September 7th._ Tolstoi went to-day to Mme. Zveginzev to ask the police inspector, who lives on her estate, to release from prison the house-painter, Ivan Grigorevich; and also to thank her for the peaches she had sent him. Tolstoi said: “There was her daughter, Princess Volkonsky, there. They all wanted to direct me on the path of truth. I tried to speak with all seriousness; but hardly anything could penetrate through their diamonds and luxury. They now employ the stove-maker who used to come to me to borrow books. And he has been telling them that I said that one should not believe in God, and various other bits of nonsense. I told them that there was nothing strange in my words being distorted. If even from Christ’s teaching people can deduce the rites of the Church, the blessing of war, etc., then it is no wonder that our words are always misrepresented and distorted. “Then they asked me how I explained the fact that in my family no one followed my teaching. I told them that it probably happened because I lived like a Pharisee, and did not fulfil my own teaching. To this they made no reply.”