Some day I will narrate the touching and instructive history of my life during those ten years of my youth.I think very many people have had a like experience.With all my soul I wished to be good,but I was young,passionate and alone,completely alone when I sought goodness.Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire,which was to be morally good,I met with contempt and ridicule,but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.
Ambition,love of power,covetousness,lasciviousness,pride,anger,and revenge--were all respected.
Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk and felt that they approved of me.The kind aunt with whom I lived,herself the purest of beings,always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a married woman:'Rien ne forme un juene homme,comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut'.[Footnote:Nothing so forms a young man as an intimacy with a woman of good breeding.]Another happiness she desired for me was that I should become an aide-de-camp,and if possible aide-de-camp to the Emperor.But the greatest happiness of all would be that I should marry a very rich girl and so become possessed of as many serfs as possible.
I cannot think of those years without horror,loathing and heartache.I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them.I lost at cards,consumed the labor of the peasants,sentenced them to punishments,lived loosely,and deceived people.Lying,robbery,adultery of all kinds,drunkenness,violence,murder--there was no crime I did not commit,and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively moral man.