Three years later, the Countess Osten-Saken died, and another aunt on the father's side, Madame P.I.Yushkoff, who resided in Kazan, became their guardian.

Lyeff Nikolaevitch went there to live, and in 1843 he entered the University of Kazan in the philological course, but remained in it only one year, because the professor of history (who had quarreled with Tolstoy's relatives) gave him impossibly bad marks, in addition to which he received bad marks from the professor of German, although he was better acquainted with that language than any other member of his course.

He was compelled to change to the law course, where he remained for two years.

In 1848 he took the examination for "candidate" in the University of St.
Petersburg.

"I knew literally nothing," he says of himself, "and I literally began to prepare myself for the examination only one week in advance." He obtained his degree of candidate, or bachelor of arts, and returned to Yasnaya Polyana, where he lived until 1851, when he entered the Forty-fourth Battery of the Twentieth Brigade of Artillery as "yunker" or supernumerary officer, with no official rank, but eligible to receive a commission as ensign, and thence advance in the service.
This battery was stationed on the Terek River, in the Caucasus, and there Tolstoy remained with it until the Crimean War broke out.