passing through Moscow, I went to see L.N. Tolstoi. He
was irritated, made stinging remarks about the _decadents_, and for
an hour and a half argued with B. Tchitcherin, who, I thought, talked
nonsense all the time. Tatyana and Mary [Tolstoi's daughters] laid
out a patience; they both wished, and asked me to pick a card out;
I picked out the ace of spades separately for each of them, and that
annoyed them. By accident there were two aces of spades in the pack.
Both of them are extraordinarily sympathetic, and their attitude to
their father is touching. The countess denounced the painter Ge all
the evening. She too was irritated.

May 5. The sexton Ivan Nicolayevitch brought my portrait, which he has
painted from a photograph. In the evening V.N.S. brought his friend N.
He is director of the Foreign Department ... editor of a magazine ...
and doctor of medicine. He gives the impression of being an unusually
stupid person and a reptile. He said: "There's nothing more pernicious
on earth than a rascally liberal paper," and told us that, apparently,
the peasants whom he doctors, having got his advice and medicine free
of charge, ask him for a tip. He and S. speak of the peasants with
exasperation and loathing.

June 1. I was at the Vagankov Cemetery and saw the graves there of
the victims of the Khodinka. [During the coronation of Nicholas II
in Moscow hundreds of people were crushed to death in the Khodinka
Fields.] I. Pavlovsky, the Paris correspondent of the _Novoye Vremya_,
came with me to Melikhovo.

August 4. Opening of the school in Talezh. The peasants of Talezh,
Bershov, Doubechnia and Sholkovo presented me with four loaves, an
icon and two silver salt-cellars. The Sholkovo peasant Postnov made a
speech.

N. stayed with me from the 15th to the 18th August. He has been
forbidden [by the authorities] to publish anything: he speaks
contemptuously now of the younger G., who said to the new Chief of
the Central Press Bureau that he was not going to sacrifice his weekly
_Nedelya_ for N.'s sake and that "We have always anticipated the
wishes of the Censorship." In fine weather N. walks in goloshes, and
carries an umbrella, so as not to die of sunstroke; he is afraid to
wash in cold water, and complains of palpitations of the heart. From
me he went on to L.N. Tolstoi.

I left Taganrog on August 24. In Rostov I had supper with a
school-friend, L. Volkenstein, the barrister, who has already a
house in town and a villa