My first examination at length arrived.  It was on differential and integral calculus.  I was indifferent and abstracted, but a feeling of some dread passed over me when the same young professor who had questioned me at the entrance examination looked me in the face.  I answered so badly that he looked at me compassionately, and said quietly but firmly that as I should not pass in the second class I had better not present myself for examination.  I went home and remained weeping in my room for three days over my failure.  I even looked out my pistols, in order that they might be at hand if I should feel a wish to shoot myself.  Finally, I saw my father and begged him to permit me to enter the hussars, or to go to the Caucasus.

Though he was not pleased, yet, when he saw how deep was my grief he sought to comfort me by saying that it was not so very bad, and that arrangements might be made for a different course of study.  After a few days I became composed, but did not leave the house till we departed for the country.  I may some day relate the sequel in the happier half of my youth.

[Tolstoy has never published the continuation, but it is generally considered that he represents himself in Constantine Levin, the hero of the greatest of his stories, and that thus we gain an insight into his mature thoughts.]

* * * * *

My Confession

Count Lyof N. Tolstoy in writing this work expressed himself in such independent terms that it could not be published in Russia, but was issued in Geneva in 1888, by the firm of Elpidine, who had printed in 1886 his “What is my Life,” and in 1892 brought out his “Walk in the Light.”  The books thus issued in the original Russian version outside of the famous author’s native land are all purely spiritual, and are written in the most elevated tone.  But Tolstoy’s mode of interpreting the Scriptures is not approved by the Holy Synod of the Eastern Orthodox Church, or Russo-Greek Communion, and thus most of his treatises which come within the strictly religious category are classed amongst the “Forbidden Books” of modern Russian literature.  In this “Confession” Tolstoy emphatically strikes the keynote which is the motif of all his didactic writings.  It is an affirmation of the principle that the pure spirit of religion, apart from external dogma, is the really precious factor of life.  He follows the same strain in his “What I Believe,” and his “Christianity of Christ.”  The following synopsis is translated and summarised from the original Russian.

I.—­Evil Early Years

Though reared in the faith of the Orthodox Eastern, or Russo-Greek Church, I had by the time when, at the age of eighteen, I left the university ceased to believe what I had been taught.  My faith could never have been well grounded in conviction.  I not only ceased to pray, but also to attend the services and to fast.  Without denying the existence of God, yet I cherished no ideas either as to the nature of God or the teaching of Christ.