The countess’s description of the “adepts” was as clever as the rest of her remarks, and absolutely accurate.  One of them was at the house for a day or two. (I had seen them elsewhere as well.) He had evidently got himself a new blouse for the visit.  It was of coarse blue and white cloth, checked, and so stiff with newness that, having a long slit and only one button, at the neck, I could see the whole of his hairy breast every time I looked at him from the left side.  I sympathized with Prince K., who being next him at table turned his back on him and ignored him conversationally; which embarrassed the young man extremely.  Apropos of his shirt, I never saw any one but the count himself wear a shirt that a real peasant would have worn; and I do not believe that even he had one of the characteristic red cotton garments which are the peasant’s pride.

I found this adept interesting when he sat opposite me, and he incited the count to vivacity.  He contributed a very good anecdote illustrative of the count’s followers.

A man in one of the southern governments—­which one is immaterial here —­sent a quantity of lithographed copies of five or ten forbidden books (Tolstoy’s and others) to a disciple of Tolstoy in one of the northern governments.  In the village of this disciple, some young women students in the higher or university courses for women, and followers of Tolstoy, were living for the summer in peasant fashion, and working in the fields, “to the scornful pity of the peasants” (I italicize this phrase as remarkable on the lips of an adept.) These young women, having heard of the dispatch by post of the books, and being in the town, thought to do the count’s disciple a favor by asking if they had arrived.  Had they refrained, nothing would have happened and the books would have been delivered without a question.  As it was, attention was attracted to the parcel by the inquiry of these girls of eccentric behavior.  The fifty or sixty copies were confiscated; the girls’ passports were taken from them.  The disciple appealed to a relative in high official position in their behalf.  The girls were informed, in consequence, that they might hire themselves out to work for this disciple of gentle birth as much as they liked; but they were forbidden to work for or among the peasants.  The adventure was not ended when this story was told.  Whether the students were satisfied with the permission to work I do not know.  Probably not; their fellow-disciple would not have scorned them as the peasants did, and contradiction, that spice of life to enthusiastic worshipers of impracticable ideas, would have been lacking.  In my opinion, the authorities committed an error in judgment.  They should have shown more faith in the peasants, the toil, and the girls’ unhardened frames.  All three elements combined could have been trusted to effect a permanent cure of those disciples by the end of the harvest, had they been gently encouraged not only to work with the peasants but to prove that they were capable of toiling and enduring in precisely the same manner and measure.