With the exception of the idiot Gricha, Tolstoy does not speak, in his narrative of _Childhood_, of these humble helpers who assisted in the work of building up his mind. But then how clearly we see it through the medium of the book--this soul of a little child; "this pure, loving heart, a ray of clear light, which always discovered in others the best of their qualities"--this more than common tenderness! Being happy, he ponders on the only creature he knows to be unhappy; he cries at the thought, and longs to devote himself to his good. He hugs and kisses an ancient horse, begging his pardon, because he has hurt him. He is happy in loving, even if he is not loved. Already we can see the germs of his future genius; his imagination, so vivid that he cries over his own stories; his brain, always busy, always trying to discover of what other people think; his precocious powers of memory[11] and observation; the attentive eyes, which even in the midst of his sorrow scrutinise the faces about him, and the authenticity of their sorrow. He tells us that at five years of age he felt for the first time "that life is not a time of amusement, but a very heavy task."[12] Happily he forgot the discovery. In those days he used to soothe his mind with popular tales; those mythical and legendary dreams known in Russia as _bylines;_ stories from the Bible; above all the sublime _History of Joseph,_ which he cited in his old age as a model of narrative art: and, finally, the Arabian Nights, which at his grandmother's house were recited every evening, from the vantage of the window-seat, by a blind story-teller. [1] With the exception of a few interruptions: one especially of considerable length, between 1865 and 1878. [2] For his remarkable biography of _Léon Tolstoï, Vie et Oeuvre, Mémoires, Souvenirs, Lettres, Extraits du Journal intime, Notes et Documents biographiques, réunis, coordonnés et annotés par P. Birukov,_ revised by Leo Tolstoy, translated into French from the MS. by J. W. Bienstock. [3] He also fought in the Napoleonic campaigns, and was a prisoner in France during the years 1814-15. [4] _Childhood_, chap. ii. [5] _Childhood_, chap, xxvii. [6] Yasnaya Polyana, the name of which signifies "the open glade" (literally, the "light glade"), is a little village to the south of Moscow, at a distance of some leagues from Toula, in one of the most thoroughly Russian of the provinces. "Here the two great regions of Russia," says M. Leroy-Beaulieu, "the region of the forests and the agricultural region, meet and melt into each other. In the surrounding country we meet with no Finns, Tatars, Poles, Jews, or Little Russians. The district of Toula lies at the very heart of Russia." [7] Tolstoy has depicted him in _Anna Karenin,_ as the brother of Levine. [8] He wrote the _Diary of a Hunter._ [9] In reality she was a distant relative. She had loved Tolstoy's father, and was loved by him; but effaced herself, like Sonia in _War and Peace_.