Page:Rolland Life of Tolstoy.djvu/30

26 brutish; the hair was cropped close, growing low upon the forehead; the eyes were small, with a hard, forbidding glance, deeply sunken in shadowy orbits; the nose was large, the lips were thick and protruding, and the ears were enormous. Unable to alter this ugliness, which even as a child had subjected him to fits of despair, he pretended to a realisation of the ideal man of the world, l’homme comme il faut. This ideal led him to do as did other “men of the world”: to gamble, run foolishly into debt, and to live a completely dissipated existence.

One quality always came to his salvation: his absolute sincerity.

“Do you know why I like you better than the others?” says Nekhludov to his friend. “You have a precious and surprising quality: candour.”

“Yes, I am always saying things which I am ashamed to own even to myself.”

In his wildest moments he judges himself with a pitiless insight.