First Epilogue: 1813-20 - Chapter VII

by Leo Tolstoy

　　In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved toBald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.

　　Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts withoutselling any of his wife's property, and having received a smallinheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre aswell.

　　In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairsthat he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and wasnegotiating to buy back Otradnoe- that being his pet dream.

　　Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to itthat it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholaswas a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially theEnglish ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoreticaltreatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising ofexpensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did notmake a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. Healways had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not anyparticular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not thenitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, norspecial plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen,oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective- the peasant laborer.When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand itsdifferent branches, it was the serf who especially attracted hisattention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also ajudge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs,trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad,and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in realitylearning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and theirjudgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood thepeasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk theirlanguage, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin tothem did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to performtoward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' managementproduced very brilliant results.

　　Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of theestates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, anddelegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had theyhad the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Beforeanalyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit andcredit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattlethe peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. Hekept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, notallowing the family groups to divide into separate households. Hewas hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried toget them expelled from the commune.

　　He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay andcorn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown andharvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as didNicholas.

　　He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs- the"drones" as he called them- and everyone said he spoiled them by hislaxity. When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf,especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided andconsulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have adomestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so withoutthe least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with thepeasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by themall with very few exceptions.

　　He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or tomake things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclinedto do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what heshould or should not do, but the standard was quite firm anddefinite in his own mind.

　　Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, hewould say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imaginedthat he could not bear them.

　　Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with hiswhole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilatedthe one way and manner of farming which produced good results.

　　Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's andregretted that she could not share it; but she could not understandthe joys and vexations he derived from that world, to her so remoteand alien. She could not understand why he was so particularlyanimated and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and spending thewhole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returnedfrom the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did notunderstand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of thefarming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, whowith his family had carted corn all night; or of the fact that his(Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked before anyone else had hisharvest in. She did not understand why he stepped out from thewindow to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked sojoyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirstyshoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away athreatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from thebarn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood andgentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say:"Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be undercover."

　　Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always readyto anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when shebrought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealedto her to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, shouldobstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in whatwas not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he lovedpassionately and which had laws she had not fathomed.

　　Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good workhe was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in theleast; it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good!That's all poetry and old wives' talk- all that doing good to one'sneighbor! What I want is that our children should not have to gobegging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all.And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That's allabout it!" said he, clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, ofcourse," he added, "for if the peasant is naked and hungry and hasonly one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself orfor me."

　　And all Nicholas did was fruitful- probably just because herefused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others forvirtue's sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboringestates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death thememory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs."He was a master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Ofcourse he was not to be trifled with either- in a word, he was areal master!"