ell-spring. He never thought about what he
had said or was going to say next, and the vivacity and the rhythmical
inflections of his voice gave it a penetrating persuasiveness. Night and
morning, when going to rest or getting up, he said, 'O God, let me
sleep like a stone and rise up like a loaf.' And, sure enough, he had no
sooner lain down than he slept like a lump of lead, and in the morning
on waking he was bright and lively, and ready for any work. He could
do anything, just not very well nor very ill; he cooked, sewed, planed
wood, cobbled his boots, and was always occupied with some job or other,
only allowing himself to chat and sing at night. He sang, not like a
singer who knows he has listeners, but as the birds sing to God, the
Father of all, feeling it as necessary as walking or stretching himself.
His singing was tender, sweet, plaintive, almost feminine, in keeping
with his serious countenance. When, after some weeks of captivity his
beard had grown again, he seemed to have got rid of all that was not his
true self, the borrowed face which his soldiering life had given him,
and to have become, as before, a peasant and a man of the people. In the
eyes of the other prisoners Plato was just a common soldier, whom they
chaffed at times and sent on all manner of errands; but to Pierre he
remained ever after the personification of simplicity and truth, such as
he had divined him to be since the first night spent by his side."

This clearly is a study from life, a leaf from Tolstoy's "Crimean
Journal." It harmonises with the point of view revealed in the "Letters
from Sebastopol" (especially in the second and third series), and shows,
like them, the change effected by the realities of war in the intolerant
young aristocrat, who previously excluded all but the comme-il-faut from
his consideration. With widened outlook and new ideals he returned to
St. Petersburg at the close of the Crimean campaign, to be welcomed by
the elite of letters and courted by society. A few years before he would
have been delighted with such a reception. Now it jarred on his awakened
sense of the tragedy of existence. He found himself entirely out of
sympathy with the group of literary men who gathered round him, with
Turgenev at their head. In Tolstoy's eyes they were false, paltry, and
immoral, and he was at no pains to disguise his opinions. Dissension,
leading to violent scenes, soon broke out between Turgenev and Tolstoy;
and the lat