VII. A STROLL IN MOSCOW WITH COUNT TOLSTOY
"Have you ever visited a church of the Old Believers?" Count Tolstoy asked me one evening. We were sitting round the supper-table at Count Tolstoy's house in Moscow. I was just experimenting on some pickled mushrooms from Yasnaya Polyana,-the daintiest little mushrooms which I encountered in that mushroom-eating land. The mushrooms and question furnished a diversion which was needed. The baby and younger children were in bed. The elders of the family, some relatives, and ourselves had been engaged in a lively discussion; or, rather, I had been discussing matters with the count, while the others joined in from time to time. It began with the Moscow beggars.
"I understand them now, and what you wrote of them," I said. "I have neither the purse of Fortunatus nor a heart of flint. If I refuse their prayers, I feel wicked; if I give them five kopeks, I feel mean. It seems too little to help them to anything but vodka; and if I give ten kopeks, they hold it out at arm's length, look at it and me suspiciously; and then I feel so provoked that I give not a copper to any one for days. It seems to do no good."
"No," said Count Tolstoy with a troubled look; "it does no good. Giving money to any one who asks is not doing good; it is a mere civility. If a beggar asks me for five kopeks, or five rubles, or five hundred rubles, I must give it to him as a politeness, nothing more, provided I have it about me. It probably always goes for vodka."
"But what is one to do? I have sometimes thought that I would buy my man some bread and see that he ate it when he specifies what the money is for. But, by a singular coincidence, they never ask for bread-money within eye-shot of a bakery. I suppose that it would be better for me to take the trouble to hunt one up and give the bread."
"No; for you only buy the bread. It costs you no personal labor."
"But suppose I had made the bread?-I can make capital bread, only I cannot make it here where I have no conveniences; so I give the money instead."
"If you had made the bread, still you would not have raised the grain,-plowed, sowed, reaped, threshed, and ground it. It would not be your labor."
"If that is the case, then I have just done a very evil thing. I have made some caps for the Siberian exiles in the Forwarding Prison. It would have been better to let their shaved heads freeze."
"Why? You gave your labor, your time. In that time you could probably have done something that would have pleased you better."
"Certainly. But if one is to dig up the roots of one's deeds and motives, mine might be put thus: The caps were manufactured from remnants of wool which were of no use to me and only encumbered my trunk. I refused to go and deliver them myself. They were put with a lot of other caps made from scraps on equally vicious principles. And, moreover, I neither plowed the land, sowed the grass, fed the sheep, sheared him, cleansed and spun the wool, and so on; neither did I manufacture the needle for the work."
The count retreated to his former argument,-that one's personal labor is the only righteous thing which can be given to one's fellow-man; and that the labor must be given unquestioningly when asked for.
"But it cannot always be right to work unquestioningly. There are always plenty of people who are glad to get their work done for them. That is human nature."
"We have nothing to do with that," he answered. "If a man asks me to build his house or plow his field, I am bound to do it, just as I am bound to give the beggar whatever he asks for, if I have it. It is no business of mine why he asks me to do it."
"But suppose the man is lazy, or wants to get his work done while he is idling, enjoying himself, or earning money elsewhere for vodka or what not? I do not object to helping the weak, or those who do not attempt to shirk. One must use discrimination."
But Count Tolstoy persisted that the reason for the request was no business of the man anxious to do his duty by aiding his fellow-men, although his sensible wife came to my assistance by saying that she always looked into the matter before giving help, on the grounds which I had stated. So I attacked from another quarter.
"Ought not every person to do as much as possible for himself, and not call upon others unless compelled to do so?"
"Certainly."
"Very good. I am strong, well, perfectly capable of waiting on myself. But I detest putting on my heavy Russian galoshes, and my big cloak; and I never do either when I can possibly avoid it. I have no right to ask you to put on my galoshes, supposing that there were no lackey at hand. But suppose I were to ask it?"
"I would do it with pleasure," replied the count, his earnest face relaxing into a smile. "I will mend your boots, also, if you wish."
I thanked him, with regret that my boots were whole, and pursued my point. "But you ought to refuse. It would be your duty to teach me my duty of waiting on myself. You would have no right to encourage me in my evil ways."
We argued the matter on these lines. He started from the conviction that one should follow the example of Christ, who healed and helped all without questioning their motives or deserts; I taking the ground that, while Christ "knew the heart of man," man could not know the heart of his brother-man,--at least not always on first sight, though afterward he could make a tolerably shrewd guess as to whether he was being used as a cat's-paw for the encouragement of the shiftless. But he stuck firmly to his "resist not evil" doctrine; while I maintained that the very doctrine admitted that it was "evil" by making use of the word at all, hence a thing to be preached and practiced against. Perhaps Count Tolstoy had never been so unfortunate as to meet certain specimens of the human race which it has been my ill-luck to observe; so we both still held our positions, after a long skirmish, and silence reigned for a few moments. Then the count asked, with that winning air of good-will and interest which is peculiar to him:-
"Have you ever visited a church of the Old Believers?"
"No. They told me that there was one in Petersburg, but that I should not be admitted because I wore a bonnet instead of a kerchief, and did not know how to cross myself and bow properly."
"I'll take you, if you like," he said. "We will go as guests of the priest. He is a friend of mine." Then he told us about it. Many years ago, a band of Kazaks and their priests migrated across the frontier into Turkey because they were "Old Believers;" that is to say, they belonged to the sect which refused to accept the reforms of errors (which had crept into the service-books and ritual through the carelessness of copyists and ignorance of the proper forms) instituted by the Patriarch Nikon in the time of Peter the Great's father, after consulting the Greek Patriarchs and books. In earlier times, these Old Believers burned themselves by the thousand. In the present century, this band of Kazaks simply emigrated. Then came the Crimean war. The Kazaks set out for the wars, the priest blessed them for the campaign, and prayed for victory against Russia. Moreover, they went to battle with their flock, and were captured. Prisoners of war, traitors to both church and state, these three priests were condemned to residence in a monastery in Suzdal. "I was in the army then," said Count Tolstoy, "and heard of the matter at the time. Then I forgot all about it; so did everybody else, apparently. Long afterward, an Old Believer, a merchant in Tula, spoke to me about it, and I found that the three priests were still alive and in the monastery. I managed to get them released, and we became friends. One died; one of the others is here in Moscow, a very old man now. We will go and see him, but I must find out the hour of the evening service. You will see the ritual as it was three hundred years ago."