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.[1] Unable to alter this ugliness, which even as a child had subjected him to fits of despair,[2] he pretended to a realisation of the ideal man of the world, l’homme comme il faut.[3] 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.[4]
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.”[5]
In his wildest moments he judges himself with a pitiless insight.
- ↑ According to a portrait dated 1848, in which year he attained his twentieth year.
- ↑ “I thought there would be no happiness on earth for any one who had so large a nose, so thick lips, and such small eyes.”
- ↑ “I divided humanity into three classes: the ‘correct,’ or ‘smart,’ who alone were worthy of esteem; those who were not ‘correct,’ who deserved only contempt and hatred; and the people, the plebs, who simply did not exist.” (Youth, xxxi.)
- ↑ Especially during a period spent in St. Petersburg, 1847–48.
- ↑ Boyhood.
