Tolstoy's state of mind during the latter part of this year is indicated by his letters. To his brother Sergius he wrote on 20th July: I think I already wrote you that I have sent in my resignation. God knows, however, on account of the war with Turkey, whether it will be accepted, or when. This disturbs me very much, for I have now grown so accustomed to happy thoughts of soon settling down in the country, that to return to Starogládovsk and again wait unendingly--as I have to wait for everything connected with my service--will be very unpleasant. Again, in December, he writes from Starogládovsk: Please write about my papers quickly. This is necessary. '_When shall I come home?_' God only knows. For nearly a year I have been thinking only of how to sheath my sword, but still cannot manage it. And as I must fight somewhere, I think it will be pleasanter to do so in Turkey than here, and I have therefore applied to Prince Serge Dmítrievitch [Gortchakóf] about it, and he writes me that he has written to his brother, but what the result will be, I do not know. It will be remembered that Tolstoy's paternal grandmother was a Gortchakóf. Through her he was nearly related to Prince S. D. Gortchakóf and to his brother, Prince Michael Dmítrievitch Gortchakóf, who had been a friend of his father's in the war of 1812, and was now in command of the Russian army on the Danube. The letter continues: At any rate by New Year I expect to change my way of life, which I confess wearies me intolerably. Stupid officers, stupid conversations, and nothing else. If there were but a single man to whom one could open one's soul! Tourgénef is right: 'What irony there is in solitude,'--one becomes palpably stupid oneself. Although Nikólenka has gone off with the hounds--Heaven knows why (Epíshka[13] and I often call him 'a pig' for so doing)--I go out hunting alone for whole days at a time from morning to evening, with a setter. That is my only pleasure--and not a pleasure but a narcotic. One tires oneself out, gets famished, sleeps like the dead, and a day has passed. When you have an opportunity, or are yourself in Moscow, buy me Dickens' _David Copperfield_ in English, and send me _Sadler's English Dictionary_ which is among my books. [13] The Cossack hunter Epíshka, the original of Eróshka, who figures so prominently in _The Cossacks_. Of the entries in his Diary at this time, we may note the following: All the prayers I have invented I replace by the one prayer, 'Our Father.' All the requests I can make to God are far more loftily expressed and more worthily of Him, in the words 'Thy Kingdom come, as in heaven so on earth.'