Father Sergius

Father Sergius

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Title: Father Sergius
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator: Louise and Aylmer Maude
Release Date: February 5, 2006 [EBook #985]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FATHER
SERGIUS ***

Produced by Judith Boss

FATHER SERGIUS
by Leo Tolstoy

I
In Petersburg in the eighteen-forties a surprising event occurred. An
officer of the Cuirassier Life Guards, a handsome prince who everyone
predicted would become aide-de-camp to the Emperor Nicholas I and
have a brilliant career, left the service, broke off his engagement to a
beautiful maid of honour, a favourite of the Empress's, gave his small
estate to his sister, and retired to a monastery to become a monk.
This event appeared extraordinary and inexplicable to those who did
not know his inner motives, but for Prince Stepan Kasatsky himself it
all occurred so naturally that he could not imagine how he could have
acted otherwise.
His father, a retired colonel of the Guards, had died when Stepan was
twelve, and sorry as his mother was to part from her son, she entered
him at the Military College as her deceased husband had intended.
The widow herself, with her daughter, Varvara, moved to Petersburg to
be near her son and have him with her for the holidays.
The boy was distinguished both by his brilliant ability and by his
immense self-esteem. He was first both in his studies--especially in
mathematics, of which he was particularly fond--and also in drill and in
riding. Though of more than average height, he was handsome and
agile, and he would have been an altogether exemplary cadet had it not
been for his quick temper. He was remarkably truthful, and was neither
dissipated nor addicted to drink. The only faults that marred his
conduct were fits of fury to which he was subject and during which he
lost control of himself and became like a wild animal. He once nearly
threw out of the window another cadet who had begun to tease him
about his collection of minerals. On another occasion he came almost
completely to grief by flinging a whole dish of cutlets at an officer who
was acting as steward, attacking him and, it was said, striking him for
having broken his word and told a barefaced lie. He would certainly
have been reduced to the ranks had not the Director of the College

hushed up the whole matter and dismissed the steward.
By the time he was eighteen he had finished his College course and
received a commission as lieutenant in an aristocratic regiment of the
Guards.
The Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich (Nicholas I) had noticed him while he
was still at the College, and continued to take notice of him in the
regiment, and it was on this account that people predicted for him an
appointment as aide-de-camp to the Emperor. Kasatsky himself
strongly desired it, not from ambition only but chiefly because since his
cadet days he had been passionately devoted to Nicholas Pavlovich.
The Emperor had often visited the Military College and every time
Kasatsky saw that tall erect figure, with breast expanded in its military
overcoat, entering with brisk step, saw the cropped side-whiskers, the
moustache, the aquiline nose, and heard the sonorous voice exchanging
greetings with the cadets, he was seized by the same rapture that he
experienced later on when he met the woman he loved. Indeed, his
passionate adoration of the Emperor was even stronger: he wished to
sacrifice something--everything, even himself--to prove his complete
devotion. And the Emperor Nicholas was conscious of evoking this
rapture and deliberately aroused it. He played with the cadets,
surrounded himself with them, treating them sometimes with childish
simplicity, sometimes as a friend, and then again with majestic
solemnity. After that affair with the officer, Nicholas Pavlovich said
nothing to Kasatsky, but when the latter approached he waved him
away theatrically, frowned, shook his finger at him, and afterwards
when leaving, said: 'Remember that I know everything. There are some
things I would rather not know, but they remain here,' and he pointed to
his heart.
When on leaving College the cadets were received by the Emperor, he
did not again refer to Kasatsky's offence, but told them all, as was his
custom, that they should serve him and the fatherland loyally, that he
would always be their best friend, and that when necessary they might
approach him direct. All the cadets were as usual greatly moved, and
Kasatsky