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Of the disciples the son of Tolstoy, Count Ilya, tells us in no uncertain accents: My father had good reason for saying that the "Tolstoyites" were to him the most incomprehensible sect and the furthest removed from his way of thinking that he had ever come across.
My brother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself but in one of the neighbouring villages; I stayed with him more than once and made the acquaintance of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly decent cottage, together with another officer of his battery, whose name was Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev. I became particularly friendly with him.
"She sleeps for half an hour, then jumps up and keeps walking and walking about to see whether the peasants have not set fire to something, have not stolen something.... I am frightened with her, Ilya Makaritch. And the Hrymin Juniors did not go to bed after the wedding, but drove to the town to go to law with each other; and folks do say it is all on account of Aksinya.
One holiday they observe, partly perforce, partly from choice, though it is not one of the great festivals of the church calendar, St. Ilya's Day. St. Ilya is the Christian representative of the old Slavic god of Thunder, Perun, as well as of the prophet Elijah. Such is the belief; such, in my experience, is the fact, also.
Terror gripped his heart like ice, tortured him and numbed him.... But at last all this uproar, after continuing about ten minutes, began gradually to subside. The landlady was moaning and groaning; Ilya Petrovitch was still uttering threats and curses.... But at last he, too, seemed to be silent, and now he could not be heard. "Can he have gone away? Good Lord!"
Ippolyte Ippolytovich was silent and indifferent, only at moments, half-closing and screwing up his eyes, and straightening out his lips, he laughed: "He-he! He-he!" Then added, slyly: "I am dying, you say? He-he! He- he!" Ilya Ippolytovich walked through the empty rooms of the dying house. How dusty and mouldy it seemed!
But suddenly screwing up his eyes, straightening out his lips and opening his empty jaws, he laughed: "He-he! he-he!" he laughed, and said jovially: "I am dying soon. He- he! he-he!" However, Ilya no longer felt as embarrassed as on that first occasion on the terrace. In a hasty undertone, almost under his breath, he asked: "But aren't you afraid?" "No! He-he!" "Don't you believe in God?" "No!
The walls of the zala were hung with old portraits of ancestors. They were rather alarming, and I was afraid of them at first; but we got used to them after a time, and I grew fond of one of them, of my great-grandfather, Ilya Andreyevitch Tolstoy, because I was told that I was like him.
"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable. "Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an age..."
It seemed to him that he discovered another falsehood in the life of man, another fraud which they conceal. He recalled one of his stokers, the old man Ilya, who, for ten copecks, used to be on watch at the fireplace out of his turn, working for a comrade eight hours in succession, amid suffocating heat.
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