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Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "...for no social system can be durable or stable, under which the majority does not enjoy equal rights but is kept in a servile position, and is bound by exceptional laws. Only when the laboring majority have the same rights as other citizens, and are freed from shameful disabilities, is a firm order of society possible." (From: "To the Czar and His Assistants," by Leo Tolstoy, ....)
• "...the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence." (From: "A Letter to a Hindu: The Subjection of India- Its....)
• "You are surprised that soldiers are taught that it is right to kill people in certain cases and in war, while in the books admitted to be holy by those who so teach, there is nothing like such a permission..." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
Chapter 13
After tea the old lady asked the visitors into the drawing-room and again sat down in her old place.
“But wouldn’t you like to rest, Count?” she asked, and after receiving an answer in the negative continued, “What can I do to entertain our dear guests? Do you play cards, Count? There now, brother, you should arrange something; arrange a set — ”
“But you yourself play preference,” answered the cavalryman. “Why not all play? Will you play, Count? And you too?”
The officers expressed their readiness to do whatever their kind hosts desired.
Lisa brought her old pack of cards which she used for divining when her mother’s swollen face would get well, whether her uncle would return the same day when he went to town, whether a neighbor would call today, and so on. These cards, though she had used them for a couple of months, were cleaner than those Anna Fedorovna used to tell fortunes.
“But perhaps you won’t play for small stakes?” inquired the uncle. “Anna Fedorovna and I play for half-kopecks.... And even so she wins all our money.”
“Oh, any stakes you like — I shall be delighted,” replied the count.
“Well then, one-kopeck ‘assignats’ just for once, in honor of our dear visitors! Let them beat me, an old woman!” said Anna Fedorovna, settling down in her armchair and arranging her mantilla. “And perhaps I’ll win a ruble or so from them,” thought she, having developed a slight passion for cards in her old age.
“If you like, I’ll teach you to play with ‘tables’ and misere,” said the count. “It is capital.”
Everyone liked the new Petersburg way. The uncle was even sure he knew it; it was just the same as “boston” used to be, only he had forgotten it a bit. But Anna Fedorovna could not understand it at all and failed to understand it for so long that at last, with a smile and nod of approval, she felt herself obliged to assert that now she understood it and that all was quite clear to her. There was not a little laughter during the game when Anna Fedorovna, holding ace and king blank, declared misere and was left with six tricks. She even became confused and began to smile shyly and hurriedly explain that she had not got quite used to the new way. But they scored against her all the same, especially as the count, being used to playing a careful game for high stakes, was cautious, skillfully played through his opponents’ hands, and refused to understand the shoves the cornet gave him under the table with his foot or the mistakes the latter made when they were partners.
Lisa brought more sweets, three kinds of jam, and some specially prepared apples that had been kept since last season and stood behind her mother’s back watching the game and occasionally looking at the officers and especially at the count’s white hands with their rosy well-kept nails which threw the cards and took up the tricks in so practiced, assured, and elegant a manner.
Again Anna Fedorovna, rather irritably outbidding the others, declared seven tricks, made only four, and was fined accordingly, and having very clumsily noted down, on her brother’s demand, the points she had lost, became quite confused and fluttered.
“Never mind, mama, you’ll win it back!” smilingly remarked Lisa, wishing to help her mother out of the ridiculous situation. “Let uncle make a forfeit, and then he’ll be caught.”
“If you would only help me, Lisa dear!” said Anna Fedorovna, with a frightened glance at her daughter. “I don’t know how this is ... ”
“But I don’t know this way either,” Lisa answered, mentally reckoning up her mother’s losses. “You will lose a lot that way, mama! There will be nothing left for Pimochka’s new dress,” she added in just.
“Yes, this way one may easily lose ten silver rubles,” said the cornet looking at Lisa and anxious to enter into conversation with her.
“Aren’t we playing for assignats?” said Anna Fedorovna, looking round at them all.
“I don’t know how we are playing, but I can’t reckon in assignats,” said the count. “What is it? I mean, what are assignats?”
“Why nowadays nobody counts in assignats any longer,” remarked the uncle, who had played very cautiously and had been winning.
The old lady ordered some sparkling home-made wine to be brought, drank two glasses, became very red, and seemed to resign herself to any fate. A lock of her gray hair escaped from under her cap and she did not even put it right. No doubt it seemed to her as if she had lost millions and it was all up with her. The cornet touched the count with his foot more and more often. The count scored down the old lady’s losses. At last the game ended, and in spite of Anna Fedorovna’s attempts to add to her score by pretending to make mistakes in adding it up, in spite of her horror at the amount of her losses, it turned out at last that she had lost 920 points. “That’s nine assignats?” she asked several times and did not comprehend the full extent of her loss until her brother told her, to her horror, that she had lost more than thirty-two assignats and that she must certainly pay.
The count did not even add up his winnings but rose immediately the game was over, went over to the window at which Lisa was arranging the
zakushka* and turning pickled mushrooms out of a jar onto a plate for
supper, and there quite quietly and simply did what the cornet had all that evening so longed, but failed, to do — entered into conversation with her about the weather.
Meanwhile the cornet was in a very unpleasant position. In the absence of the count, and more especially of Lisa, who had been keeping her in good humor, Anna Fedorovna became frankly angry.
“Really, it’s too bad that we should win from you like this,” said Polozov in order to say something. “It is a real shame!”
“Well, of course, if you go and invent some kind of ‘tables’ and ‘miseres’ and I don’t know how to play them.... Well then, how much does it come to in assignats?” she asked.
“Thirty-two rubles, thirty-two and a quarter,” repeated the cavalryman, who under the influence of his success was in a playful mood. “Hand over the money, sister; pay up!”
“I’ll pay it all, but you won’t catch me again. No! ... I shall not win this back as long as I live.”
And Anna Fedorovna went off to her room, hurriedly swaying from side to side, and came back bringing nine assignats. It was only on the old man’s insistent demand that she eventually paid the whole amount.
Polozov was seized with fear lest Anna Fedorovna should scold him if he spoke to her. He silently and quietly left her and joined the count and Lisa who were talking at the open window.
On the table spread for supper stood two tallow candles. Now and then the soft fresh breath of the May night caused the flames to flicker. Outside the window, which opened onto the garden, it was also light but it was a quite different light. The moon, which was almost full and already losing its golden tinge, floated above the tops of the tall lindens and more and more lit up the thin white clouds which veiled it at intervals. Frogs were croaking loudly by the pond, the surface of which, silvered in one place by the moon, was visible through the avenue. Some little birds fluttered slightly or lightly hopped from bough to bough in a sweet-scented lilac-bush whose dewy branches occasionally swayed gently close to the window.
“What wonderful weather!” the count said as he approached Lisa and sat down on the low window-sill. “I suppose you walk a good deal?”
“Yes,” said Lisa, not feeling the least shyness in speaking with the count. “In the morning about seven o’clock I look after what hs to be attended to on the estate and take my mother’s ward, Pimochka, with me for a walk.”
“It is pleasant to live in the country!” said the count, putting his eye-glass to his eye and looking now at the garden, now at Lisa. “And don’t you ever go out at night, by moonlight?”
“No. But two years ago uncle and I used to walk every moonlight night. He was troubled with a strange complaint — insomnia. When there was a full moon he could not fall asleep. His little room — that one — looks straight out into the garden, the window is low but the moon shines straight into it.”
“That’s strange: I thought that was your room,” said the count.
“No. I only sleep there tonight. You have my room.”
“Is it possible? Dear me, I shall never forgive myself for having disturbed you in such a way!” said the count, letting the monocle fall from his eye in proof of the sincerity of his feelings. “If I had known that I was troubling you ... ”
“It’s no trouble! On the contrary I am very glad: uncle’s is such a charming room, so bright, and the window is so low. I shall sit there till I fall asleep, or else I shall climb out into the garden and walk about a bit before going to bed.”
“What a splendid girl!” thought the count, replacing his eyeglass and looking at her and trying to touch her foot with his own while pretending to seat himself more comfortably on the window-sill. “And how cleverly she has let me know that I may see her in the garden at the window if I like!” Lisa even lost much of her charm in his eyes — the conquest seemed too easy.
“And how delightful it must be,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the dark avenue of trees, “to spend a night like this in the garden with a beloved one.”
Lisa was embarrassed by these words and by the repeated, seemingly accidental touch of his foot. Anxious to hide her confusion she said without thinking, “Yes, it is nice to walk in the moonlight.” She was beginning to feel rather uncomfortable. She had tied up the jar out of which she had taken the mushrooms and was going away from the window, when the cornet joined them and she felt a wish to see what kind of man he was.
“What a lovely night!” he said.
“Why, they talk of nothing but the weather,” thought Lisa.
“What a wonderful view!” continued the cornet. “But I suppose you are tired of it,” he added, having a curious propensity to say rather unpleasant things to people he liked very much.
“Why do you think so? The same kind of food or the same dress one may get tired of, but not of a beautiful garden if one is fond of walking — especially when the moon is still higher. From uncle’s window the whole pond can be seen. I shall look at it tonight.”
“But I don’t think you have any nightingales?” said the count, much dissatisfied that the cornet had come and prevented his ascertaining more definitely the terms of the rendezvous.
“No, but there always were until last year when some sportsman caught one, and this year one began to sing beautifully only last week but the police-officer came here and his carriage-bells frightened it away. Two years ago uncle and I used to sit in the covered alley and listen to them for two hours or more at a time.”
“What is this chatterbox telling you?” said her uncle, coming up to them. “Won’t you come and have something to eat?”
After supper, during which the count by praising the food and by his appetite has somewhat dispelled the hostess’s ill humor, the officers said good-night and went into their room. The count shook hands with the uncle and to Anna Fedorovna’s surprise shook her hand also without kissing it, and even shook Lisa’s, looking straight into her eyes the while and slightly smiling his pleasant smile. This look again abashed the girl.
“He is very good-looking,” she thought, “but he thinks too much of himself.”
From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org
Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "There are people (we ourselves are such) who realize that our Government is very bad, and who struggle against it." (From: "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)
• "If, in former times, Governments were necessary to defend their people from other people's attacks, now, on the contrary, Governments artificially disturb the peace that exists between the nations, and provoke enmity among them." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
• "...for no social system can be durable or stable, under which the majority does not enjoy equal rights but is kept in a servile position, and is bound by exceptional laws. Only when the laboring majority have the same rights as other citizens, and are freed from shameful disabilities, is a firm order of society possible." (From: "To the Czar and His Assistants," by Leo Tolstoy, ....)
The English Translator of Leo Tolstoy, Louise Maude was born Louise Shanks in Moscow, one of the eight children of James Steuart Shanks, was the founder and director of Shanks & Bolin, Magasin Anglais (English store). Two of Louise's sisters were artists: Mary knew Tolstoy and prepared illustrations for Where Love is, God is, and Emily was a painter and the first woman to become a full member of the Peredvizhniki. Louise married Aylmer Maude in 1884 in an Anglican ceremony at the British vice-consulate in Moscow, and they had five sons, one of them still-born. (From: Wikipedia.org.)
Aylmer Maude and Louise Maude were English translators of Leo Tolstoy's works, and Aylmer Maude also wrote his friend Tolstoy's biography, The Life of Tolstoy. After living many years in Russia the Maudes spent the rest of their life in England translating Tolstoy's writing and promoting public interest in his work. Aylmer Maude was also involved in a number of early 20th century progressive and idealistic causes. Aylmer Maude was born in Ipswich, the son of a Church of England clergyman, Reverend F.H. Maude, and his wife Lucy, who came from a Quaker background. The family lived near the newly built Holy Trinity Church where Rev. Maude's preaching helped draw a large congregation. A few of the vicar's earlier sermons were published with stirring titles like Nineveh: A Warning to England!, but later he moved from Evangelical Anglicanism towards the Anglo-Catholic Church Union. After boarding at Christ's Hospital from 1868 to 1874, Aylmer went to study at the Moscow... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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