[6] Tolstoy has never drawn a character with so sure, so broad a touch as in the beginning of _Resurrection._ Witness the admirable description of Nekhludov's toilet and his actions of the morning before the first session in the Palace of Justice. [7] The word "act" to be found here and there in the text in such phrases as "act of faith" "act of will," is used in a sense peculiar to Catholic and Orthodox Christians. A penitent is told to perform an "act of faith" as penance; which is usually the repetition of certain prayers of the nature of a creed. The "act," in short, is a repetition, a declamation, a meditation: anything but an action.--(TRANS.) [8] Letter of Countess Tolstoy's, 1884. CHAPTER XVI RELIGION AND POLITICS Tolstoy never renounced his art. A great artist cannot, even if he would, abandon the reason of his existence. He can, for religious reasons, cease to publish, but he cannot cease to write. Tolstoy never interrupted his work of artistic creation. M. Paul Boyer, who saw him, during the last few years, at Yasnaya Polyana, says that he would now give prominence to his evangelistic works, now to his works of imagination; he would work at the one as a relaxation from the other. When he had finished some social pamphlet, some _Appeal to the Rulers_ or _to the Ruled,_ he would allow himself to resume one of the charming tales which he was, so to speak, in process of recounting to himself; such as his _Hadji-Mourad,_ a military epic, which celebrated an episode of the wars of the Caucasus and the resistance of the mountaineers under Schamyl.[1] Art was still his relaxation, his pleasure; but he would have thought it a piece of vanity to make a parade of it. With the exception of his _Cycle of Readings for Every Day of the Year_ (1904-5),[2] in which he collected the thoughts of various writers upon _Life and the Truth_--a true anthology of the poetical wisdom of the world, from the Holy Books of the East to the works of contemporary writers--nearly all his literary works of art, properly so called, which have been written later than 1900 have remained in manuscript.[3]