“You … ? You? Yes, of course; I didn’t recognize you, what was I thinking … ? You weren’t a child forever…. I always think of you as a boy, Sergei, occasionally as a young man who has just begun to sprout a beard. Let me get straight to the point: the gravity of the situation obliges me to make this visit. You can’t let Anna Karenina’s portrait end up in the tsar’s hands, he’s a foolish man who’s his own worst enemy, and he’s an enemy of the common good, to boot. You just can’t give it to him. That fellow Mikhailov painted her at my behest. I’m the author. I don’t like saying so—I have no interest whatsoever in staking my claim, I abhor all forms of private property—but you have no right to hand over something that I—”

Claudia has been listening serenely. Wisely, she interrupts him when she knows that doing so will ease his anxiety:

“We understand, we have no doubts that the marvelous canvas is your creation and that Sergei is your character….”

“That’s quite enough, Claudia,” Tolstoy says. “You have less right than anyone to speak…. Only a woman or a doctor could utter such drivel! What an insult, his own wife … !”

Sergei intervenes, mastering his nature, in a calm, clear voice:

“It’s absolutely true. Hard to swallow and even harder to for me, even for us, to comprehend, but it’s the truth.”

His words make the author explode: