to the novel as a failure and blamed Katkov's incessant interference for it. "His was the publication in which literary qualities were being methodically repressed, destroyed, or applied to serve specific interests which had nothing to do with literature," he later insisted. Some of his colleagues (Dostoevsky among them) criticized the novel from the technical point of view, speaking of the stiltedness of the "adventure" plot and the improbability of some of its characters. The short novel Laughter and Grief (Sovremennaya letopis, March–May, 1871), a strong social critique focusing on the fantastic disorganization and incivility of Russian life and commenting on the sufferings of individuals in a repressive society proved to be his last; from then on Leskov avoided the genre of the orthodox novel. In November 1872, though, he adapted Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea for children. Five years later Józef Ignacy Kraszewski's The Favourites of King August came out, translated from the Polish and edited by Leskov. The Cathedral Folk (Soboryane), published in 1872, is a compilation of stories and sketches which form an intricate tapestry of thinly drawn plotlines. It was seen as a turning point in the author's career; a departure from political negativism. According to Maxim Gorky, after Daggers, his "evil novel", Leskov's "craft became more of a literary icon-painting: he began to create a gallery of saints for the Russian iconostases." Leskov's miscellaneous sketches on the lives and tribulations of the Russian small-scale priesthood and rural nobility gradually gravitated (according to critic V. Korovin) into a cohesive, albeit frameless tapestry of a battlefield where "good men" (Tuberozov, Desnitsyn, Benefaktov, all of them priests) were fighting off a bunch of crooks and scoundrels; nihilists and officials. Soboryane, published by The Russian Messenger in 1872, had for its major theme the intrinsic, unbridgeable gap between the "down to earth", Christianity of the people and the official, state-sponsored corrupt version; it riled both the state and church authorities, was widely debated and had great resonance. In the summer of 1872 Leskov travelled to Karelia and visited the Valaam monastery in Lake Ladoga; the result of this trip was his Monastic Isles cycle of essays published in Russky mir in 1873. In October 1872 another collection, Small Belle-lettres Works by Leskov-Stebnitsky came out. These were the months of his short-lived friendship with Aleksey Pisemsky; Leskov greatly praised his novel In the Vortex and in August 1872 visited