'Ilien and there he resolved to change his life. He would go to mass every Sunday, read the Gospels one hour every day, give two and one- half rubles a month to the poor—without telling anyone—clcan his room himself, oblige no one to wait on him, always go to the University on foot—and if his family gave him a coach of his own he would sell it without a twinge and offer the money to some needy family. As for his studies: he would confound his professors by his application, win two gold medals, become a lecturer, a doctor of philosophy, one of the greatest scholars in Russia. This would not prevent him from keeping in top physical condition, so that he could exccl the famous athlete Rappo in strength and skill. When he had reached the height of his powers, She would enter his life. She: the ideal woman—who was, Tolstoy later wrote, "a little like Sonya, a little like Basil's wife, Masha, used to be when she was washing our linen in a tub, and a little like the woman with a white throat and pearl necklace I saw once at the theater in a box next to us." And if some upstart should take it into his head to offend this adorable creature, he would pluck him off the ground like a feather, just to frighten him, and then magnanimously let him go. Everybody would admire and love him. At the sound of his name hundreds of strangers would commune in ecstasy. He would be rich, honored, respected. . . . From these dizzy heights he plummeted back to earth with a jolt that restored him to his senses in a flash, showing him all his old shortcomings, and he fell to loathing himself, body and soul, with morbid delight. A few days before his examinations he decided to write down in a notebook the "Rules of Life" he would follow in the future. lie divided them into three categories: duties to oneself, duties to one's neighbor, duties to God. He began to list them, lost count, gave up and went back to the first page to set down the title: "Rules of Life." But his pen would not move smoothly across the page, the letters kept running together, the whole thing was illegible. "Why is everything so beautiful and clear inside," he asked, "and so formless on paper and in my life in general?"5 A servant interrupted him to announce that the priest had come to confess the family before Faster communion. He quickly hid his notebook, took a glance in the mirror (that hideous nose, lumpish, red!), brushed his hair upward—he fancied this gave him "a pensive air"—and went down to the sitting room where an icon and lighted tapers had been placed on a cloth-covered table. The confessor, an old monk with white hair and a severe countenance, did not appear at all shattered by Leo's revelations and concluded with the words, "the blessing of the Heavenly Father be upon thee, my son, and may He ever preserve thee in faith, meekness, and humility. Amen." Purified and relieved, Leo no longer doubted that God looked upon him with special favor and would, in any event, help him through his exams.
The truth is that in his state of unpreparedness, aid from such a source would not have been unwclcomc; and during the first question periods, he might well have believed that Providence had indeed singled him out: in religious instruction he got four out of five, five in German, Arabic, Turko-Tatar; five-plus in French, four in algebra, arithmetic, English and Russian literature; but he answered very badly in history and geography, statistics, Latin . . . ones and twos rained down upon the examiners' cards. Hoping to rescue the candidate, the trustee of the University of Kazan who was a friend of the Tolstoy family asked him an easy question: "Name the French seaports." Leo's mind went blank. From the North Sea to the Mediterranean he saw nothing but barren coastline. With a premonitory shudder, he realized that France would be his downfalclass="underline" one out of five. He flunked.
Swallowing his humiliation, he decided to take the exams over again in September. His holidays were ruined by academic anxiety. No trip to Yasnaya Polyana. Instead of his favorite authors Pushkin, Dickens, Schiller, Dumas—he had to dig his way back into the dim, gray mist of his textbooks. At last he passed, and could don the student's uniform he had been coveting for months. Dark-blue tunic with brass buttons, three-cornered cocked hat, patent-leather boots and a sword at his side— the first time he went out on the street in this garb, he was conscious that he was no longer little Leo: he was Count Leo Tolstoy. "I felt," he wrote, "against my will, an oozing, radiant, idiotically self-satisfied smile spreading across my face and I noticcd that this smile communicated itself even to the people I was talking to."0
His first contacts with the academic world increased his feeling of his own singularity. Dozens of boisterous students shoved into him without noticing him, exchanged rough handshakes, evil-sounding comments and unintelligible jokes. At first it seemed out of the question for him to join any of his fellow students' groups. Some he found poor and vulgar, not at all comme il faut; the others, the aristocratic clan, displayed a shocking degree of doltish pretentiousness; and the professors rattled off their lectures without conviction. An outpouring of empty words, a Niagara of platitudes! . . . Gradually, however, he grew so used to this fraternal community that he could no longer live without it. He even came to love the atmosphere of the lecture halls, with the speaker's monotonous voicc droning on and on, the jostling in the corridors, the glasses of vodka tossed off on the sly in some nearby tavern, the easy-going, interchangeable companions, who distracted him from his work. He could, of course, have made up for lost time at home, after classes were over. But then there were the temptations of society. As grandson of a former governor of the town, nephew of the Yushkovs who had such a wide circle of friends, and the bearer in his own right of a considerable name, Leo Tolstoy was much sought-after in the salons, despite his youth. Kazan was one long series of parties, winter and summer. The marshal of nobility, governor of the province, trustee of the University of Kazan, principal of the Rodyonov School for Young Ladies, notables, wealthy merchants, senior civil servants, all took turns arranging balls, suppers, masquerades, tableaux-vivants. These gatherings of the "gilded youth" amused Leo Tolstoy, he would have been grief-stricken to miss a single one; and yet, as soon as he found himself among other people, he became paralyzed by a morbid shyness. Deafened by the blare of the music, blinded by the chandeliers and the young ladies' glances, agitated by a thousand subtle scents given off by the waltzing gowns, he lost every semblance of poise, did not dare open his mouth, and wished himself invisible. While his fellow students were flirting with the ladies, he took refuge in a comer, brows beetling, hands hidden behind his back, and mutely admired the inaccessible beauties beyond. On the rare occasions when he invited one of them to dance, he was so distraught that he got his feet mixed up, blushed, apologized and speedily led her back to her place. "My dear Leo, you are nothing but a sack of flour!" exclaimed (in French) the principal of the Rodyo- nov School for Young Ladies, not at all pleased with his deportment. The young ladies whispered among themselves that he was "a boring partner."7
In spite of his dread of appearing ridiculous, he agreed to act in two amateur theatricals being given in February 1845. "To which of the actors shall we give the palm?" wrote a local chronicler of mellifluous pen. "We are hard put to say, for each played his part so excellently that in many placcs the audience forgot it was a stage play they were observing and not nature itself."8 One member of the company was a young man named Dmitry Dyakov (Mitya), to whom Leo was immediately attracted. He was also struck by Dmitry's sister, Alexandra. But she was so pretty that, whenever he looked at her, he was overcome by his own ugliness. Mitya, who had a gentle face, a fine small mouth and wavy blond hair, was less intimidating. In their long conversations together, the two friends agreed that man's destiny was to progress toward moral perfection and that it was for each person, in his small sphere of influence, to discourage vice by setting an example of virtue. "Our souls," Tolstoy later related, "were so well attuned that any chord struck in one, no matter how lightly, echoed in the other."9 Sometimes they descended from the clouds to talk of their future, military service, art, marriage, how to bring up children. They both considered it absurd to look for beauty in a woman; any self-respecting man should marry a person who was "able, above all else, to help him improve himself."10 Metaphysical problems intoxicated them like fumes of opium. "I used to love," Tolstoy wrote, "the moment when ideas, flowing faster and faster, growing more and more abstract, finally became so nebulous that one could no longer find any words to express them and, believing one was saying what one meant, said something quite different. I loved the instant when, after rising higher and higher into the realms of thought, one suddenly sensed the immensity beyond and recognized the impossibility of going any further."11 Tolstoy was unmistakably intimidated by Mitya Dyakov, who was five years his senior. He wished to hide nothing from this incomparable, irreplaceable friend. "I always say exactly what I am most ashamed to admit, but only to people I am sure of!" he proudly declared one day.12