These theories, those of a revolutionary Conservative, as Tolstoy always was, he attempted to put into practice at Yasnaya, where he was rather the fellow-disciple than the master of his pupils.[14] At the same time, he endeavoured to introduce a new human spirit into agricultural exploitation. Appointed in 1861 territorial arbitrator for the district of Krapiona, he was the people's champion against the abuses of power on the part of the landowners and the State. We must not suppose that this social activity satisfied him, or entirely filled his life. He continued to be the prey of contending passions. Although he had suffered from the world, he always loved it and felt the need of it. Pleasure resumed him at intervals, or else the love of action. He would risk his life in hunting the bear. He played for heavy stakes. He would even fall under the influence of the literary circles of St. Petersburg, for which he felt such contempt. After these aberrations came crises of disgust. Such of his writings as belong to this period bear unfortunate traces of this artistic and moral uncertainty. _The Two Hussars_ (1856) has a quality of pretentiousness and elegance, a snobbish worldly flavour, which shocks one as coming from Tolstoy. _Albert_, written at Dijon in 1857, is weak and eccentric, with no trace of the writer's habitual depth or precision. The _Diary of a Sportsman_ (1856), a more striking though hasty piece of work, seems to betray the disillusionment which Tolstoy inspired in himself. Prince Nekhludov, his _Doppellganger,_ his double, kills himself in a gaming-house. "He had everything: wealth, a name, intellect, and high ambitions; he had committed no crime; but he had done still worse: he had killed his courage, his youth; he was lost, without even the excuse of a violent passion; merely from a lack of will." The approach of death itself does not alter him: "The same strange inconsequence, the same hesitation, the same frivolity of thought...." Death!... At this period it began to haunt his mind. _Three Deaths_ (1858-59) already foreshadowed the gloomy analysis of _The Death of Ivan Ilyitch;_ the solitude of the dying man, his hatred of the living, his desperate query--"Why?" The triptych of the three deaths--that of the wealthy woman, that of the old consumptive postilion, and that of the slaughtered dog--is not without majesty; the portraits are well drawn, the images are striking, although the whole work, which has been too highly praised, is somewhat loosely constructed, while the death of the dog lacks the poetic precision to be found in the writer's beautiful landscapes. Taking it as a whole, we hardly know how far it is intended as a work of art for the sake of art, or whether it has a moral intention.