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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: himself strongly desired it, not from ambition only but chiefly
because since his cadet days he had been passionately devoted to
Nicholas Pavlovich. The Emperor had often visited the Military
College and every time Kasatsky saw that tall erect figure, with
breast expanded in its military overcoat, entering with brisk
step, saw the cropped side-whiskers, the moustache, the aquiline
nose, and heard the sonorous voice exchanging greetings with the
cadets, he was seized by the same rapture that he experienced
later on when he met the woman he loved. Indeed, his passionate
adoration of the Emperor was even stronger: he wished to
sacrifice something--everything, even himself--to prove his
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