"This is the story of the bird which is caught after a pinch of salt has been put on his tail. It is quite as easy to catch him without it. They laugh at us who speak of arbitration and disarmament by consent of the Powers. Mere verbiage, this! Naturally the Governments approve: worthy apostles! They know very well that their approval will never prevent their doing as they will." (_Cruel Pleasures._) [6] Nature was always "the best friend" of Tolstoy, as he loved to say: "A friend is good; but he will die, or he will go abroad, and one cannot follow him; while Nature, to which one may be united by an act of purchase or by inheritance, is better. Nature to me is cold and exacting, repulses me and hinders me; yet Nature is a friend whom we keep until death, and into whom we shall enter when we die." (Letter to Fet, May 19, 1861. _Further Letters_.) He shared in the life of nature; he was born again in the spring. "March and April are my best months for work." Towards the end of autumn he became more torpid. "To me it is the most dead of all the seasons; I do not think; I do not write; I feel agreeably stupid." (To Fet, October, 1869.) But the Nature that spoke so intimately to his heart was that of his own home, Yasnaya Polyana. Although he wrote some very charming notes upon the Lake of Geneva when travelling in Switzerland, and especially on the Clarens district, whither the memory of Rousseau attracted him, he felt himself a stranger amid the Swiss landscape; and the ties of his native land appeared more closely drawn and sweeter: "I love Nature when she surrounds me on every side, when on every hand the warm air envelopes me which extends through the infinite distance; when the very same lush grasses that I have crushed in throwing myself on the ground make the verdure of the infinite meadows; when the same leaves which, shaken by the wind, throw the shadow on my face, make the sombre blue of the distant forest; when the very air I breathe makes the light-blue background of the infinite sky; when not I alone am delighting in nature; when around me whirl and hum millions of insects and the birds are singing. The greatest delight in nature is when I feel myself making a part of all. Here (in Switzerland) the infinite distance is beautiful, but I have nothing in common with it." (May, 1851.) [7] Conversations with M. Paul Boyer _(Le Temps,_ August 28, 1901). The similarity is really very striking at times, and might well deceive one. Take the profession of faith of the dying Julie: "I could not say that I believed what it was impossible for me to believe, and I have always believed what I said I believed. This was as much as rested with me." Compare Tolstoy's letter to the Holy Synod: