This lady had made what seemed a brilliant marriage with the wealthy Count Osten-Saken, whose family was among the first in the Baltic Provinces; but her married life was a terrible one. Her husband went out of his mind and tried to kill her. While he was confined in an asylum, the Countess gave birth to a still-born child. To save her from this fresh shock, a girl born of a servant, the wife of a Court cook, was substituted for the still-born baby. This girl, Páshenka, lived with the Tolstoy family, and was already grown up when Tolstoy was quite a child. Subsequently the Countess Alexandra lived first with her parents and then with her brother, Tolstoy's father. Though she was a devotee of the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church of which Tolstoy eventually became so fierce an opponent, much in her character and conduct accords with the precepts laid down in his later writings; and it is evident that certain aspects of his understanding of the Christian character, which strike most Englishmen as peculiar, far from being invented out of his own head, are derived from a deeply-rooted Russian and family tradition. He tells us: My aunt was a truly religious woman. Her favourite occupation was reading the Lives of the Saints, conversing with pilgrims, half-crazy devotees, monks and nuns, of whom some always lived in our house, while others only visited my aunt.... She was not merely outwardly religious, keeping the fasts, praying much, and associating with people of saintly life, but she herself lived a truly Christian life, trying not only to avoid all luxury and acceptance of service, but herself serving others as much as possible. She never had any money, for she gave away all she had to those who asked. A servant related to me how, during their life in Moscow, my aunt used carefully on tip-toe to pass her sleeping maid, when going to Matins, and used herself to perform all the duties which it was in those days customary for a maid to perform. In food and dress she was as simple and unexacting as can possibly be imagined. Unpleasant as it is to me to mention it, I remember from childhood a specific acid smell connected with my aunt, probably due to negligence in her toilet: and this was the graceful poetic Aline with beautiful blue eyes, who used to love reading and copying French verses, who played on the harp, and always had great success at the grandest balls! I remember how affectionate and kind she always was, and this equally to the most important men and women and to the nuns and pilgrims. Tolstoy goes on to tell how pleasantly she bore the jests and teasing that her devotion to the priests brought upon her.