It was also in 1851 that Tolstoy first met Sophia Andreyevna Miller (1827?-1892), the wife of a cavalry colonel (whom she later divorced with great difficulty) and an impressively well-educated woman who knew fourteen languages, at a Bolshoy Theater masquerade.
After the War, in 1856, on the day of his Coronation, Alexander II appointed Tolstoy as one of his personal aide-de-camp.