Tatiana Yergolsky was exceedingly religious, and one of the customs of Yasnaya Polyana was to extend hospitality to all types of pilgrims--monks and nuns and beggars, who led a life of humility and deliberately courted contumely. Tolstoy's early life was spent in a peculiar poetic and religious atmosphere, an atmosphere mediæval in its tone. This should never be forgotten, for, after a whole lifetime of experience and achievement, we find him returning once more to the beliefs of his youth, stripping them of supernaturalism and ecclesiasticism, but holding with all his heart to the virtues of these pilgrim friends--humility and simplicity and love. The Tolstoy brothers all went in turn to the {18} university of Kazan. Leo first chose the faculty of Eastern languages, intending to enter the diplomatic service; he then tried law and other courses, but was capricious and unsuccessful; few great writers have ever cared so little for studies or been so scornful of intellectual attainment in others. Tolstoy left the university in disgust, and returned for a time to Yasnaya Polyana, intending to devote himself to his peasants. There is a study of his life at this period in the book entitled _A Landed Proprietor_, which gives an account, at once graphic and sombre, of the enormous difficulties of the task. We are shown typical days in the life of the hero--Nekhlúdof--as he visits the peasants who have asked for his aid. Many of them live in wretched hovels--this, for example, is the house of one Churis: "The uneven, smoke-begrimed walls of the dwelling were hung with various rags and clothes; in the living-room the walls were literally covered with reddish cockroaches, clustering around the holy images and benches.... In the middle of this dark foetid apartment, not fourteen feet square, was a huge crack in the ceiling; and in spite of the fact that it was braced up in two places, the ceiling hung down so that it threatened to fall from moment to moment. "'It will crush us to death, it will crush the children,' cried the woman."