- Project Runeberg -  In the Land of Tolstoi /
3

(1897) [MARC] Author: Jonas Jonsson Stadling Translator: Will Reason With: Gerda Tirén, Johan Tirén - Tema: Russia
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“Countess Tolstoi?” I asked.

“They call me so,” she said.

At the same moment a deep voice was heard in the hall, and
the Count himself stood before me, dressed in a large
sheepskin coat of the kind worn by the mushiks. With a hearty
grip of his strong hand he bade me welcome, asked about my
journey, admired my Lapp dress, and showed me into a small
room that I was to occupy. Then he told me to hold out my
feet, and pulled off my Lapp boots. This was done so simply
that they were off before I thought of protesting. Yet
the spectacle of Count Tolstoi, whose greatness had been filling
my mind a moment or two before, pulling off my boots like a
common servant left me breathless with surprise. Then things
took their proper perspective, and I saw the naturalness of it,
and learnt more from this little unaffected deed of helpfulness
than from all the learned lectures I had heard or all the
volumes of theology I had read. I was in the presence of a
man who had devoted a whole life to passionate search
after truth and reality, and had found “the meaning of life”
in following Him “who came not to be served, but to serve”;
a man who not only talks about “égalité et fraternité, but
whose life is égalité et fraternité.”

I had come to do what I could to help in his work among the
starving mushiks, but before giving an account of what I
myself saw and heard while with this notable family in that
sadly memorable famine year of 1892, it will be worth while to
give a rapid sketch of the Count’s life and character, as a man
and the friend of men.

Count Tolstoi, the author, is well known, and has received
his place among the foremost geniuses of the day. Leo Tolstoi,
the philosopher and social reformer, has been amply discussed
both by those who regard him as a new prophet, and those
who look on him as a fanatic and a crank. The man Lyeff
Nikolaievitch is comparatively little known. He has, it is
true, told us somewhat of himself and his struggles after truth
in his Confession, and throughout his other writings are
scattered incidents taken from his own experiences. But he
has said little or nothing of his work for his fellows, and what

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