“There are some ideas which can be understood by all and are necessary to all, but are expressed in the language of a small group of people. For instance, the poem ‘I remember the wonderful moment,’ or ‘When to the mortal the noisy day passes into silence’--do you remember them? A peasant couldn’t understand them.” Tolstoi said: “I was thinking a great deal about art to-day and I re-read my article, and I must confess I agreed with my ideas.” Tolstoi is reading the English biography of Chopin (by Huneker). He does not like it. He said to me: “I have not read books of that kind for a long time. The author does not reveal Chopin’s inner life, but displays his own erudition, his ability to write well and wittily. He is controversial and proves the faults of other biographers. But there is no Chopin here.... Yet there are many interesting facts in it. It is the life of a small circle of poets, writers, and musicians--what a perverted and terrible life! And George Sand, that disgusting woman!... I can’t understand her success.” Marie Nikolaevna, who was listening, said: “No! she has done good things. Take, for instance, her _Consuelo_.” “No, that is not good. It is all false and bad and tedious; I could never read it.” _July 30th._ There were staying at Yasnaya Marie Alexandrovna, I. Gorbunov, and E. I. Popov. Tolstoi was not well. His leg was still painful. We played chess. Then there was tea. Before the game of chess, when I had come into the drawing-room by myself, Tolstoi was telling Obolensky and the others, whom I mentioned, the plot of Anatole France’s novel, a very complicated novel. I believe it is called _Jocaste_. Tolstoi was telling the plot in detail and was surprised at its absurdity, but said it was written with A. France’s usual mastery. As I came in, I had met two men downstairs who wished to see Tolstoi. As Tolstoi is ill, Gusev (the secretary) went downstairs. One of the men turned out to be a sectarian, “an immortalist,” and the other sent up by Gusev a strange note in which, referring to Boulanger’s promise to try to find a job for him, he said something foolish about his desire to be useful to Tolstoi. Altogether there was no sense, no purpose in it. Tolstoi said: “It is amazing, why can’t they understand? It seems to him that only he and myself exist, and yet there are hundreds of him, and only one of me. And what can I do for him?” At tea Tolstoi talked about the ‘immortalist.’ Marie Nikolaevna asked what sect it was. Tolstoi said to her: “The ‘immortalists’ believe that if they go on believing they will never die. And when one of them dies they say: he did not really believe.... I quite understand it. With them immortality is identified with the body. At a low level of religious development that is understandable. The Church doctrine also thinks of resurrection as a resurrection in the flesh.” Marie Nikolaevna began to say that she believed that there _would_ be something after death. Tolstoi said: