February 16.  Several of us met in the evening in the offices of Russian Thought to discuss the People’s Theatre.  Every one liked Shekhtel’s plan.

February 19.  Dinner at the “Continental” to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861].  Tedious and incongruous.  To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—­that is lying to the Holy Ghost.

February 22.  I went to Serpukhovo to an amateur performance in aid of the school at Novossiolki.  As far as Zarizin I was accompanied by ... a little queen in exile,—­an actress who imagines herself great; uneducated and a bit vulgar.

From March 25 till April 10 I was laid up in Ostroumov’s clinic.  Haemorrhage.  Creaking, moisture in the apices of both my lungs; congestion in the apex of the right.  On March 28 L.N.  Tolstoi came to see me.  We spoke of immortality.  I told him the gist of Nossilov’s story “The Theatre of the Voguls,” and he evidently listened with great pleasure.

May 1.  N. arrived.  He is always thanking you for tea and dinner, apologizing, afraid of being late for the train; he talks a great deal, keeps mentioning his wife, like Gogol’s Mijniev, pushes the proofs of his play over to you, first one sheet then another, giggles, attacks Menshikov, whom Tolstoi has “swallowed”; assures you that he would shoot Stassiulevitch, if the latter were to show himself at a review, as President of the Russian Republic; giggles again, wets his mustaches with the soup, eats hardly anything, and yet is quite a nice man after all.

May 4.  The monks from the monastery paid us a visit.  Dasha Moussin-Poushkin, the wife of the engineer Gliebov, who has been killed hunting, was there.  She sang a great deal.

May 24.  I was present at the examination of two schools in Tchirkov. [The Tchirkov and Mikhailovo schools.]

July 13.  Opening of the school at Novossiolki which I have had built.  The peasants gave me an icon with an inscription.  The Zemstvo people were absent.

Braz [painter] does my portrait (for the Tretiakov Gallery).  Two sittings a day.

July 22.  I received a medal for my work on the census.

July 23.  In Petersburg.  Stopped at Souvorin’s, in the drawing-room.  Met VI.  T.... who complained of his hysteria and praised his own books.  I saw P. Gnyeditch and E. Karpov, who imitated Leykin showing off as a Spanish grandee.

July 27.  At Leykin’s at Ivanovsk. 28th in Moscow.  In the editorial offices of Russian Thought, bugs in the sofa.

September 4.  Arrived in Paris.  “Moulin Rouge,” danse du ventre, Cafe du Neon with Coffins, Cafe du Ciel, etc.

September 8.  In Biarritz.  V.M.  Sobolevsky and Mme. V.A.  Morosov are here.  Every Russian in Biarritz complains of the number of Russians here.