Tolstoy полностью

I imagine you are already saying that I am the most empty-headed fellow [Sergey’s pet phrase for Tolstoy], and you will be telling the truth. God knows what I have gone and done! I set off for no reason to Petersburg, did nothing worthwhile there, just spent a heap of money and got into debt. It’s stupid. It’s unbelievably stupid. You won’t believe how much it’s tormenting me. The main thing are the debts which I have to pay, and as soon as possible, because if I don’t pay them soon, I will lose my reputation on top of the money. Do this, I beg you: without telling the aunts and Andrey [Sobolev, the estate manager] why and what for, sell [the village of] Vorotinka to either uvarov or Seleznev …²¹

Since he had arrived in St Petersburg, Tolstoy had taken two law exams, but then had got bored and given up. His latest half-baked scheme was to join the army as a volunteer.

As soon as the news had reached St Petersburg from France in March 1848 that King Louis Philippe had been overthrown and a republic had been proclaimed, an alarmed Nicholas I had started mobilising his troops. The 1848 French Revolution launched a wave of insurrections across Europe, and Nicholas I was particularly alarmed when revolution broke out in areas of the Habsburg Empire such as Hungary (which shared a border with Russia). The dreaded ‘Gendarme of Europe’ was thus only too happy to accept the invitation of the Austrian government to help restore order in Hungary by despatching four infantry regiments and an artillery brigade in May 1849, not least because there were two Poles in charge of the Hungarian troops who had been in exile since their own failed uprising against Russian rule in 1831. The solipsistic and rash Tolstoy was oblivious to all the politics, however. He was dreaming of military glory. He now set his sights on joining the Horse Guards, and perhaps even receiving his commission as an officer before completing the standard two-year period of service.²² It was another plan that was not thought through.

Just over a week later Tolstoy wrote again to Sergey to tell him he was, in fact, not going to join the army now, and had gone back to his previous plan of taking his law exams. He also asked Sergey about the possibility of his serf Alexey Petukhov working for him, offering to take care of his family and pay him ten roubles a month (a sum which puts into perspective the thousands of roubles he sometimes lost at cards).²³ Sergey had been dutifully biting his lip and helping his brother out over the previous months, and he did not bother giving him any advice now, knowing in advance that it would not be heeded. But he did exhort Tolstoy to come back home and sort himself out. ‘You say that stupid things only happen once in one’s life, and if only that were so!’ he wrote, warning him that he was in danger of squandering his entire assets.²⁴ To Aunt Toinette, before whom he felt ashamed, Tolstoy wrote that he had dropped his earlier idea of working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was intending to come back and prepare for his exams at Yasnaya Polyana. Sometime either at the end of May or the beginning of June in 1849, just as the northern capital’s famed ‘white nights’ were about to reach their peak, he set out to travel home, first to Moscow and then on towards Tula. He was leaving behind a number of creditors, and his unpaid debts would gnaw at his conscience over the next few years.