1854
Not till January 1854 did the long-expected order arrive allowing him to pass the examination (a pure formality at that time) entitling him to become an officer. On the 19th he left for home, and on 2nd February reached Yásnaya, where he enjoyed a three weeks' stay with his Aunt Tatiána, his brother, and a friend. On this journey he encountered a severe storm, to which we owe The Snow Storm, published a couple of years later, and probably also much of the storm description in Master and Man, written in later life.
The Russo-Turkish war had now begun in earnest, and, as a result of his application, he received orders to join the army of the Danube, which he set out accordingly to do.
Of the Caucasian period of his life, as of his University days, Tolstoy has at different times expressed himself differently. To Birukóf, in 1905, he spoke of it as one of the best times of his life, notwithstanding all his deflections from his dimly recognised ideals. Yet two years earlier, writing of the four periods of his life, he had spoken of 'the terrible twenty years of coarse dissipation, the service of ambition, vanity, and above all, of lust,' which followed after the age of fourteen.
But what it comes to is, that Tolstoy is a man of moods, and judges himself and others, sometimes by ordinary and sometimes by extraordinary standards.