ing serfs before--the more
primitive method of obliging them to work so many days a week for the
master before they could provide for their own wants, and the more
enlightened manner of exacting only _obrok_, or yearly tribute.
Tolstoy had already allowed his serf to "go on _obrok_," but, according
to himself, he did nothing very generous when the new act was passed
providing for emancipation.

He defended the freed men as far as possible, however, from the tyranny
of other landowners, who began to dislike him very thoroughly. He had
won the poor from their distrust by an experiment in education which he
tried at his native place of Yasnaya Polyana.

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The school opened by Count Tolstoy was a "free"; school in every sense
of the word, which was then becoming popular. The children paid no
fees and were not obliged to attend regularly. They ran in and out as
they pleased and had no fear of punishments. It was a firm belief of
the master that compulsory learning was quite useless. He taught in
the way that the pupils wished to learn, humbly accepting their views
on the matter. Vivid narration delighted the eager peasant boys in
their rough sheepskins and woollen scarves. They would cry "Go on, go
on," when the lesson should have ended. Any who showed weariness were
bidden to "go to the little ones." At first, the peasants were afraid
of the school, hearing wonderful stories of what happened there. They
gained confidence at length, and then the government became suspicious.

Tolstoy had given up his work with a feeling of dissatisfaction and
retired to a wild life with the Bashkirs in the steppes, where he hoped
to recover bodily health, when news came that the schools had been
searched and the teachers arrested. The effect on the ignorant was to
make Tolstoy seem a criminal.

Hatred of a government, where such a search could be conducted with
impunity, was not much modified by the Emperor's expression of regret
for what had happened. The pond on Tolstoy's estate had been dragged,
and cupboards and boxes in his own house opened, while the floor of the
stables was broken up with crowbars. Even the diary and letters of an
intimate character which had been kept secret from the Count's own
family were read aloud by gendarmes. In a fit of rage, the reformer
wrote of giving up his house and leaving Russia "where one cannot know
from moment to moment what awaits one."

{221}

In 1862 Tolstoy married Sop