In contrast with the action of the Colonel and the Minister, was that of the peasants of the district, who flocked in crowds to see the prisoner; bringing him milk, eggs, home-made linen and all the gifts their poverty could afford. When the day of execution arrived, Shiboúnin went quite impassively to his death; to all appearance incapable of understanding what was happening. The people thronged around the post to which he was to be tied--the women weeping and some of them fainting. They fetched a priest to perform Masses at his grave, and paid for the service to be repeated all day. At night contributions of copper money, linen, and candles such as are burnt in Russian churches, were laid upon his grave. Next day the Masses were recommenced, and were continued until the local police forbade any more religious services, and levelled the grave that the people might not continue to visit it. The knowledge of such a difference between the spirit of the governors and the governed, helps us once again to understand Tolstoy's ultimate conviction that Government and the administration of law are essentially evil things, always tending to make the world worse and not better. In later life we may be sure he would not have been content to base his plea for mercy on merely legal grounds. From time to time he continued to be troubled with ill-health; for instance, in July 1866 he writes that he is confined to the house with pains in the stomach which make it impossible for him to turn quickly. In November--contrary to what he had often said in the past and was to return to in later life--he expresses his sense of the importance of authorship. Fet, criticising something in _War and Peace_, had quoted the words, _irritabilis poetarum gens_, and Tolstoy, replying 'Not I,' welcomes the criticism, begs for more, and goes on to say: What have you been doing? Not on the Zémstvo [County Council] or in farming (all that is compulsory activity such as we do elementally and with as little will of our own as the ants who make an ant-hill; in that sphere there is nothing good or bad), but what are you doing in thought, with the mainspring of your being, which alone has been, and is, and will endure in the world? Is that spring still alive? Does it wish to manifest itself? How does it express its wish? Or has it forgotten how to express itself? That is the chief thing. By the autumn of this year the railway southwards from Moscow to Koursk had been constructed as far as Toúla, making it easier to get from Yásnaya to Moscow, and to the rest of Europe. Yet Tolstoy comparatively seldom felt tempted to leave his much-loved, tranquil, busy, country life, in which alone he found himself able to work with the maximum of efficiency. About this time he undertook the planting of a birch wood, which has since grown up and become valuable. 1867