[24] Kropotkin tells us: "I saw Turgenev for the last time in the autumn of 1881. He was very ill, and worried by the thought that it was his duty to write to Alexander III. who had just come to the throne, and hesitated as to the policy he should follow--asking him to give Russia a constitution, and proving to him by solid arguments the necessity of that step. With evident grief he said to me, 'I feel that I must do it, but I feel I shall not be able to do it.' In fact, he was already suffering awful pains occasioned by a cancer in the spinal cord, and had the greatest difficulty in sitting up and talking for a few moments. He did not write then, and a few weeks later it would have been useless, Alexander III. had announced in a manifesto his resolution to remain the absolute ruler of Russia."--_Memoirs of a Revolutionist_, vol. ii. p. 222. X THE TALES CHAPTER X THE TALES In addition to his six great novels Turgenev published, between 1846 and his death in 1883, about forty tales which reflect as intimately social atmospheres of the 'thirties, 'forties and 'fifties as do Tchehov's stories atmospheres of the 'eighties and 'nineties. Several of these tales, as _The Torrents of Spring_, are of considerable length, but their comparatively simple structure places them definitely in the class of the _conte_. While their form is generally free and straightforward, the narrative, put often in the mouth of a character who by his comments and asides exchanges at will his active rôle for that of a spectator, is capable of the most subtle modulations. An examination of the chronological order of the tales shows how very delicately Turgenev's art is poised between realism and romanticism. In his finest examples, such as _The Brigadier_ and _A Lear of the Steppes_, the two elements fuse perfectly, like the meeting of wave and wind in sea foam. "Nature placed Turgenev between poetry and prose," says Henry James; and if one hazards a definition we should prefer to term Turgenev _a poetic realist_. In our first chapter we glanced at _The Duellist_, and in the same year (1846) appeared _The Jew_, a close study, based on a family anecdote, of Semitic double-dealing and family feeling: also _Three Portraits_, a more or less faithful ancestral chronicle. This latter tale, though the hero is of the proud, bad, "Satanic" order of the romantic school, is firmly objective, as is also _Pyetushkov_ (1847), whose lively, instinctive realism is so bold and intimate as to contradict the compliment that the French have paid themselves--that Turgenev ever had need to dress his art by the aid of French mirrors.