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GREAT RUSSIA

After 1870 he left Germany, and settled permanently in Paris, and France was grateful to the stranger who preferred the hospitality of the Conquered to that of the Conqueror. An intimate friend of Flaubert, who had organized in his honour the famous dinners at Magny, of which Edmond de Goncourt became the chronicler (see "The Diary of the Goncourts"), translated by Mérimée, extolled by About and George Sand, by Taine and Renan, recognized as a master by Zola and Daudet, Turgenev became almost a French classic, and the first on the lists of the new realistic and naturalistic school. In spite of such adulation and affection, exile was not good for him. His popularity in France, besides being a little artificial, could never reconcile him to his unpopularity at home, and he carried in his heart till death the wound struck by an alienated and ungrateful country. His mental sufferings, his irregular life had prematurely undermined his vigorous constitution. Turgenev died in 1883, after years of excruciating suffering caused by cancer of the spinal cord. By a strange irony of fate, he who lived as a disregarded exile returned after death to his native country, and Russia, who had disowned him, gave to his dead