riptions of life
under natural conditions, the silence of the steppes and the solitude
of the forest where hunter and trapper followed their pursuits far from
society.

Tolstoy set out for Germany in 1857, anxious to study social conditions
that he might learn how to raise the hapless serfs of Russia, bound,
patient and inarticulate, at the feet of landowners, longing for
independence, perhaps, when they suffered any terrible act of
injustice, but patient in the better times when there was food and
warmth and a master of comparatively unexacting temper.

Tolstoy had already written _Polikoushka_, a peasant story which
attracted some attention. He was in love with the words People and
Progress, and spoke them continually, trampling upon conventions. A
desire to be original had been strong within him when he followed the
usual pursuits of Russians of fashion. He delighted in this wandering
in unknown tracks where none had preceded him. He was sincere, but he
had not yet taken up his life-work.

At Lucerne he was filled with bitterness against the rich visitors at a
hotel who refused to give alms to a wandering musician. He took the
man to his table and offered wine for his refreshment. The indignation
of the other guests made him dwell still more fiercely upon {219} the
callousness of those who neglect their poorer neighbours. Yet the
quixotic noble was still sumptuous in his dress and spent much time on
the sports which had been the pastimes of his boyhood. He nearly lost
his life attempting to shoot a she-bear in the forest. The beast drew
his face into her mouth and got her teeth in the flesh near the left
eye. The intrepid sportsman escaped, but he bore the marks for long
afterwards.

In 1861 a new era began in Russia, and a new period in Tolstoy's life,
which was henceforward bound up with the history of the country folk.
Alexander II issued a decree of emancipation for the serf, and Tolstoy
was one of the arbitrators appointed to supervise the distribution of
the land, to arrange the taxes and decide conditions of purchase. For
each peasant received an allotment of land, subject for sixty years to
a special land-tax. In their ignorance, the serfs were likely to sell
themselves into new slavery where the proprietors felt disposed to
drive hard bargains. Many landlords tried to allot land with no
pasture, so that the rearer of cattle had to hire at an exorbitant
rate. There had been two ways of hold