There was much that attracted Tolstoy in the simple life of these people: their frankness, their skill in hunting, their contempt for all that is artificial or weak, and their freedom from the moral struggles that tormented him. With one beautiful girl--Mariána--he fell deeply in love, but she remained indifferent to the attentions of a man who was inferior in the arts of war and hunting to some of the young men of her own tribe. His courtship failed (as he says of his hero in _The Cossacks_) because he could not, like a dashing young Cossack, 'steal herds, get drunk on Tchikir wine, troll songs, kill people, and when tipsy climb in at her window for a night, without thinking who he was or why he existed.' Though one has always to be carefully on one's guard against taking Tolstoy's stories as though they were autobiographical, there are passages in _The Cossacks_ which certainly apply to himself, and give a vivid idea of some of his moods at this time, as well as of his way of life while living as a Junker at Starogládovsk. On one occasion the hero is out hunting in the woods and asks himself: 'How must I live so as to be happy, and why was I formerly not happy?' And he remembered his previous life, and felt disgusted with himself.... And suddenly a new light seemed revealed to him. 'Happiness,' said he to himself, 'consists in living for others. That is clear. The demand for happiness is innate in man; therefore it is legitimate. If we seek to satisfy it selfishly: by seeking wealth, fame, comforts, or love, circumstances may render the satisfaction of these desires impossible. It follows that they are illegitimate, but not that the demand for happiness itself is illegitimate. But what desire is there that can always be satisfied in spite of external conditions? What desire? Love, self-sacrifice!' He was so glad and excited at discovering this, as it seemed to him, new truth, that he jumped up and began impatiently seeking for some one for whom he might quickly sacrifice himself: to whom he might do good, and whom he could love. 'Yes; I need nothing for myself!' he kept mentally repeating: 'Then why not live for others?' In the same story Tolstoy tells us that his hero lived monotonously and regularly. He had little to do with his Commander or fellow-officers. In the Caucasus the position of a Junker with means of his own was in this respect particularly favourable. He was not sent to drill nor kept at work. As a reward for going on an expedition he was recommended for a commission, and meanwhile he was left alone. The officers considered him an aristocrat, and therefore in their intercourse with him bore themselves with dignity. Card-playing and the officers' carousals with singers, of which he had had experience when on service with the detachment, seemed to him unattractive, and he avoided the officers' society. Again he tells us that his hero