The complex and multifaceted figure of Tolstoy fascinated his contemporaries as much as it fascinates those who approach his works today. The writer, the moral thinker, the ascetic, the count, the landowner, the peasant and, above all, the man capable of inspiring sincere admiration in those who treated him, are re fl ected in these testimonies of people who knew him, they treated it or just watched it for years. Each one of them re fl ects an aspect of his inordinate and fascinating personality, as if it were a tessera that draws, piece by piece, the complex mosaic.