The following extract from his Diary preserves the record of the rapidly changing moods he experienced in those days. Soon after reaching the Caucasus he noted: STARY URT, _11th June 1851_. Yesterday I hardly slept all night. Having posted up my Diary, I prayed to God. It is impossible to convey the sweetness of the feeling I experienced during my prayer. I said the prayers I usually repeat by heart: 'Our Father,' 'To the Virgin,' etc., and still remained in prayer. If one defines prayer as a petition or as thanksgiving, then I did not pray. I desired something supreme and good; but what, I cannot express, though I was clearly conscious of what I wanted. I wished to merge into the Universal Being. I asked Him to pardon my crimes; yet no, I did not ask that, for I felt that if He had given me this blissful moment, He had pardoned me. I asked, and at the same time felt that I had nothing to ask, and that I cannot and do not know how to ask; I thanked Him, but not with words or thoughts. I combined in one feeling both petition and gratitude. Fear quite vanished. I could not have separated any one emotion--faith, hope or love--from the general feeling. No, this was what I experienced yesterday: it was love of God, lofty love, uniting in itself all that is good, excluding all that is bad. How dreadful it was to me to see the trivial and vicious side of life! I could not understand its having any attraction for me. How I asked God with a pure heart to accept me into His bosom! I did not feel the flesh.... But no, the carnal, trivial side again asserted itself, and before an hour had passed I almost consciously heard the voice of vice, vanity, and the empty side of life; I knew whence that voice came, knew it had ruined my bliss! I struggled against it, and yet yielded to it. I fell asleep thinking of fame and of women; but it was not my fault, I could not help it. Again, on 2nd July, after writing down reflections on suffering and death, he concludes: How strong I seem to myself to be against all that can happen; how firm in the conviction that one must expect nothing here but death; yet a moment later I am thinking with pleasure of a saddle I have ordered, on which I shall ride dressed in a Cossack cloak, and of how I shall carry on with the Cossack girls; and I fall into despair because my left moustache is higher than my right, and for two hours I straighten it out before the looking-glass.