t Compare with the feelings of little Sergey in Anna Karenina, when he refuses to believe his mother's death.
major-domo filled the soup plates and handed them out, making allowance for the rank and age of each. Leo's mouth watered and he squinted in impatience.
Later, to divert the children, Pelagya Nikolayevna allowed them to go to the theater even though they were still in mourning. Dazzled by the huge red-plush and gilt nave, Leo was unable to decide where the entertainment was. Instead of watching the stage he looked at the boxes across from him; the audience interested him more than the actors. Instinctively, he turned toward truth, toward life. So many attentive, sober, mysterious faces! These strangers sitting there in rows fascinatcd him even more because he had hardly ever been out in society before. On Christmas Day, at the home of the vastly rich Shipov, he felt that he and his brothers had been invited out of charity, because they were orphans. And as though to prove the fact, the presents they received were a shoddy lot; the most handsome toys on the tree went to the nephews of Prince Gorchakov, former minister of war.
This humiliation paled, however, beside another that Leo had been suffering for the last few months, at the hands of a newcomer in the house: M. Prosper dc St. Thomas. The pedagogical competence of old Fyodor Ivanovich Rosscl having proved increasingly inadequate, Grandmother decided to dismiss him and engage a Frenchman in his stead. Stunned by his disgrace, the miserable outcast began by demanding, in addition to his wages, repayment for the little gifts he had presented to various members of the family; then, dissolving in tears, he begged to be kept on without payment. Grandmother stood fast, though, and he was forced to relinquish his post to Prosper dc St. Thomas. While his former pupils made a poor show of dissembling their sorrow, he pointed out each of them in turn to his successor, saying, "Sergey is a good boy, he will do well but he must be watched. . . . Leo is too tender-hearted, you will get nothing out of him by threats, but everything by kindness. Please, I ask you, love them, treat them well. . . ." Prosper de St. Thomas commented drily: "Be assured, mein Ilerr, that I shall find the way to bring them to heel."3
Prosper dc St. Thomas was a short little man of twenty-five, blond, muscular and active, good-looking and with a bettcr-than-average education, but he was full of his own importance and favored strong-arm techniques with his pupils. Perhaps, like many of his fellow countrymen who had come to seek their fortunes in Russia, he dreamed of capturing the heart of some wealthy heiress and marrying her. In the meantime, he spent his pocket money on patent-leather boots and silk waistcoats and wore violet-scented powder; his spccch was full of grace- notes and frills and he "played his role of pedagogue to the hilt." He was not the only tutor in the household, however. In all, the Tolstoys employed eleven teachers, not counting the dancing-master. According to Aunt Toincttc's account book, these gentlemen's honoraria for 1837-38 totaled 8304 rubles,J a very considerable sum at the time. But the executive director of studies was Prosper de St. Thomas.
Beneath his stiff, sarcastic exterior, the man's judgment was not unsound. Speaking of his pupils, he said: "Nicholas is both willing and able; Sergey is able but not willing; Dmitry is willing but not able; and Leo is neither." And, it was true, Leo was a poor student, he did not understand problems in arithmetic and made no attempt to memorize the names and dates his masters stuffed into his head. And yet, behind his laziness, it was easy to detect a sensitivity and imagination that were altogether out of the ordinary. Prosper de St. Thomas himself had to agree. "That boy has a head," he said one day. "He's a young Moli&re." But it required more than flattery to win the boy over. From the start he had hated this foreign schoolmaster for his self-centered- ness, pretentiousness and conceit. When St. Thomas wanted to punish one of his pupils, he would puff up his chest, fling out one arm and cry, "On your knees, you good-for-nothing!" "I stood there, livid with anger," Tolstoy wrote in Boyhood, "and told myself I would die on the spot sooner than kneel in front of him; but he leaned on my shoulders with all his strength, bent my back and forced me to my knees." The harder St. Thomas worked to humiliate the boy, the more he rebelled against his teacher's heavy-handed authority. As an act of defiance, one morning he stuck out his tongue at St. Thomas, who promptly grabbed him by the hand, locked him into a dark closet and threatened to use a whip on him. He did not really intend to beat the boy, knowing how strongly his family opposed corporal punishment. But Leo was already imagining himself dishonored, debased, presenting his naked backside to his heartless, violet-scented schoolmaster. Flogged, like a muzhik. Anything but that! Seated on a chest in the darkness, his eyes brimming with tears and his throat contracted with rage, he let himself be carried away by a wild dream. He imagined himself poor, orphaned, leaving his birthplace, enlisting in the hussars, going off to war, massacring his enemies, and collapsing, covered with wounds and the single cry of "Victor)'!" on his lips. Later, lie recovered, was promoted to the rank of general, and was walking down the Tver Boulevard with
t About that time the ruble was listed at So.52. This relation is based on the price of rubles, in terms of sterling, in St. Petersburg and the price of dollars, also in terms of sterling, in New York. The value of the dollar in i860 was about five times greater than in 1967 (using 1949 as the base year). Very approximately, then, 8304 rubles would equal $23,500 in today's dollars. This method of calculation is used throughout.
his ami in a sling one day when he met the emperor, who congratulated him on his bravery. Leaning casually upon his saber, he requested, as a reward for his heroic deeds, the favor of annihilating his enemy, "the alien St. Thomas." Of course, the emperor consented, and then it was Leo's turn, towering above his ex-tutor, to bellow, "On your knees, you good-for-nothing!" "But suddenly," he wrote, "it occurs to me that the real St. J6romc [St. Thomas] will come through that door any minute with the rod, and I see that I am not a general who has saved his fatherland but the most wretched, the most pitiable of creatures."4 And, the moment after he was brought back to reality, he sailed off on the wings of another fancy: he was dead, lamented by all his loved ones, and beside his coqjse stood St. Thomas, overcome with remorse, begging forgiveness of his family. He was told: "You are the one responsible for his loss; you terrified him; he could not bear the humiliation you inflicted upon him. Begone, dog!"5
It was while ruminating thus bitterly in the dark that Leo experienced his first religious doubts. If God were just, why was St. Thomas not punished for his wickedness on the spot? Why go on living in a world in which might was stronger than right? It must be so pleasant to die and fly away to dwell among the pure souls! Lost in his tears, he repeated over and over in a half-whisper, "We are flying away, higher and higher!" When he was released from his confinement twenty-four hours later, the desire to leave the earth still tormented him. He imagined that all he had to do was crouch down and hug his arms around his knees. One day he could stand it no longer and jumped out of his third-floor bedroom window. The cook found him lying senseless on the ground. By some miracle, none of his bones was broken, and all he got for his fall was a mild concussion. After eighteen hours of deep sleep, he awoke as though nothing had happened. Later, he confessed that he had jumped out the window less in an attempt to fly than to "impress the others." "I remember," he wrote, "that I was continually preoccupied with myself: I was always conscious, rightly or wrongly, of what people thought of me, and worried about the feelings I inspired in those around me, and this spoiled all my pleasure." Often his sclf-consciousncss helped him to overcome his fears. When he went to the riding school with his brothers, he demanded that the riding- master give him a lesson, too. Once 011 the horse's back lie took fright, but he clenched his teeth and hung on. With every jolt he slid inexorably earthward, but he did not utter a sound. Finally, he fell. Would they laugh at him? Choking down his tears, he asked to be put back in the saddle, set off at a trot, and fell 110 more.