Please write and tell me how you like The Snow Storm. I am dissatisfied with it—seriously. But I now want to write many things, only I positively have no time in this damned Petersburg. Anyway, whether they let me go abroad or not, I intend to take furlough in April and come to the country.
On 13th May he was still in Petersburg, and we find him noting in his Diary:
The powerful means to true happiness in life, is to let flow from oneself on all sides, without any laws, like a spider, a cobweb of love, and to catch in it all that comes to hand: women old or young, children, or policemen.
Among his literary acquaintances at this time the one for whom he seems to have felt most sympathy and respect was Drouzhínin, a critic, writer of stories, and translator of Shakespear. Before long we find Drouzhínin leading a revolt against the Contemporary and attracting some of the contributors to the Reading Library, a rival magazine, to which Tolstoy contributed an article in December 1856.
It was not till the end of May that he got away from Petersburg; and on his road home he stopped in Moscow and visited the family of Dr. Behrs, a Russian of German origin, who had married Miss Islényef. The first mention one gets of Tolstoy's future wife is a note in his Diary relating to this visit to the Behrs's country house near Moscow. He says: 'The children served us. What dear, merry little girls! Little more than six years later, the second of these 'merry little girls' was Countess Tolstoy!
Three days later he writes to his brother Sergius: 'I spent ten days in Moscow ... very pleasantly, without champagne or gipsies, but a little in love—I will tell you later on with whom.' The object of his affection at that time was of course not Dr. Behrs's twelve-year-old daughter.
From Yásnaya he made a round of visits to see his married sister and other neighbours; among them Tourgénef, at whose house a gathering of the Tolstoys took place. Special honour was paid to Leo, who comically posed as the hero of a Triumph. He was being crowned and almost covered with flowers, leaves, grass, and anything that came handy, when the approach of an unwelcome guest—a lady neighbour of Tourgénef's—was announced. Thereupon the host seized his head in despair; the triumpher, with a howl, began to turn rapid catherine-wheel somersaults through the rooms; and his sister's husband was quickly bandaged up as an invalid, to be used as an excuse and a protection from the unwelcome intruder.
The letter to Sergius, quoted above, contains an allusion to Tolstoy's first serious matrimonial project.
He had in childhood been much attached to a certain Sónitchka Kalóshina. While at the University, he had had a sentimental love affair with a certain Z. M., who seems hardly to have been aware of his devotion. Then there was the Cossack damsel who figures in The Cossacks, and subsequently he much admired a society lady, Madame Sch., who may also have been scarcely aware of his feelings, for Tolstoy was shy and timid in these matters—which were quite different from his affairs with gipsy girls and other hireable women.
The present affair with V. V. A. was more serious than any of its predecessors. It led to a long correspondence, and even to their engagement being announced among relations and friends. The lady was the good-looking daughter of a landowner in the neighbourhood of Yásnaya Polyána.