In June 1887, while a guest at Tolstoy’s estate, Iasnaia Poliana, the eminent jurist Anatolii Koni told Tolstoy a remarkable story from his own practice. In the early 1870s, while Koni was serving as prosecutor for the St. Petersburg district court, a well-dressed young man “with a pale, expressive face and restless, burning eyes” had come to his office. He asked Koni to overrule a prison official who had refused to transmit without first reading it a letter to a female prisoner named Rozalia Oni. Rozalia Oni was a prostitute of Finnish origin. Convicted of having robbed a client of 100 roubles, she had been sentenced to four months' confinement. Without revealing his motives, the young man said that he wanted to marry the woman.

The young man, Koni knew, belonged to a well-known family, was well educated, and held a responsible post in the civil service. Koni tried to dissuade him, saying that Rozalia could never be happy with him, but it was to no avail. Rozalia herself had eagerly agreed to the marriage. Koni refused to expedite the wedding, however, and the advent of Lent necessitated further postponement. During this waiting period Rozalia caught the typhus endemic in Russian prisons and died. As Koni sententiously put it, “The Lord drew a curtain over her life and stopped the beating of her poor heart.”