DURING the first years of our married life we had few people to stay with us. I remember that Count Sollogub, the author of Tarantas, with his two sons, used to come and visit us. He was a clever and amiable man, and we all liked him very much; he won my heart by saying to Leo Nikolaevich: "Lucky man to have such a wife." To me he once said: "You are, in fact, the nurse of your husband's talent, and go on being that all your life long." I always remembered this wise and friendly advice of Count Sollogub, and I tried to follow it as well as I could.

Very often Fet used to come to us; Leo Nikolaevich was fond of him and Fet was fond of us both. On his journeys between Moscow and his estate he used to stay with us, and his good wife, Marie Petrovna, often came with him; he used to make the house ring with his loud, brilliant, often witty, and sometimes flattering, talk.

In the early summer of 1863, he was at Yasnaya Polyana when Leo Nikolaevich was tremendously interested in bees and used to spend whole days among the hives; sometimes I used even to bring the lunch out there. One evening we all decided to have tea in the apiary. Everywhere in the grass glow-worms began to shine. Leo Nikolaevich took two of them and laughingly held them to my ears, saying: "Look, I always promised you emerald ear-rings; could anything be better than these?" When Fet left, he wrote me a letter in verse, ending as follows:

In my hand is yours,

What a marvel!

And on the earth are two glow-worms,

Two emeralds.{35}

Almost always after a visit Afanasii Afanasevich Fet sent me a poem, and many of them were dedicated to me.{36} In one of them I was pleased by the, perhaps, undeserved description of the qualities of my soul in the following stanza:

And, behold, enchanted

By thee, here, remote,

I understand, bright creature,

All the purity of thy soul.

When we settled down in Moscow, Fet bought a house near us and often visited us, saying that in Moscow all he wanted was a samovar. We laughed at this unexpected desire of Fet's, and he explained: "I must be certain that in such and such a house, in the evening, the samovar is boiling and that there is sitting there a sweet hostess with whom I can spend a pleasant evening."

Among the interesting visitors at Yasnaya Polyana was Turgenev, who came twice. The first time was in 1878, and the second when he came to ask Leo Nikolaevich to be present at the opening of the Pushkin memorial. He was amiable and lively and liked our happy family life, and he said to Leo Nikolaevich: "How well you did for yourself, my dear, in marrying your wife."{37}

I thank those dear, dead, real friends of ours for their invariable goodness and kindness to me. Many of them were more than twenty years older than I and treated me, as a young woman, with kindliness.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov often came to us on long visits; he was for all of us a loved and respected friend and he was always deeply touched by our life and was fond of the children. He used to say: "I must write about Yasnaya Polyana and the life here." But his intention remained unfulfilled.

Many other guests came to us at Yasnaya Polyana and in Moscow. Among them were foreigners, Riepin, the famous artist, GuÉ, Syerov, Ginsburg, Truberskoi, Aronson who painted and sculptured Leo Nikolaevich and myself. My portraits for some reason were never like me.

A great deal could be written about this happy period of my life, when everything was so full of joy, interest, and occupation. I regret that at the time I kept few records of events and the interesting conversation of visitors and of Leo Nikolaevich himself; now I remember little, for I have passed through different experiences in which I had to pay with sorrow and tears for former happiness, experiences caused by painful circumstances and by wicked people.