f his class when he was fifty and adopted those of the
peasantry. In the country he rose early, going out to the fields to
work for the widow and orphan who might need his service. He hoped to
find the mental ease of the manual labourer by entering on these
duties, but his mind was often troubled by religious questions. He was
serving God, as he deemed it, after a period of unbelief natural to
young men of his station.

He had learnt to make boots and shoes and was proud of his skill as a
cobbler. He gave up field sports because they were cruel, and
renounced tobacco, the one luxury of Mazzini, because he held it
unhealthy and self-indulgent. Money was so evil a thing in his sight
that he would not use it and did not carry it with him. "What makes a
man good is having but few wants," he said wisely. There were
difficulties in the way of getting rid of all his property, for the
children of the family could not be entirely despoiled of their
inheritance. There were thirteen of them, and they did not all share
the great reformer's ideas.

In 1888, Tolstoy eased his mind by an act of formal {223} renunciation.
The Countess was to have charge of the estates in trust for her
children. The Count was still to live in the same house, but resolved
to bind himself more closely to the people. He had volunteered to
assist when the census was taken in 1880 and had seen the homes of
poverty near his little village. He had been the champion of the
neighbourhood since he defended a young soldier who had been unjustly
sentenced. There was always a knot of suppliants under the "poor
people's tree," ready to waylay him when he came out of the porch.
They asked the impossible sometimes, but he was always kindly.

Love for the serf had been hereditary. Tolstoy's father was a
kindly-natured man, and those who brought up the dreamy boy at Yasnaya
had insisted on gentle dealings with both men and animals. There was a
story which he loved of an orderly, once a serf on the family estate,
who had been taken prisoner with his father after the siege of Erfurt.
The faithful servant had such love for his master that he had concealed
all his money in a boot which he did not remove for several months,
though a sore was formed. Such stories tallied with the reformer's own
experiences of soldiers' fighting at Sebastopol.

His mind was ever seeking new ways to reach the people. He believed
that they would read if there were simple books