roads, wandering, fleeing, knocking at the doors of a convent, then resuming his flight, and at last falling upon the way, in an obscure little village, never to rise again.[1] On his death-bed he wept, not for himself, but for the unhappy; and he said, in the midst of his sobs:
“There are millions of human beings on earth who are suffering: why do you think only of me?”
Then it came—it was Sunday, November 20, 1910, a little after six in the morning—the “deliverance,” as he named it: “Death, blessed Death.”
- ↑ The Correspondance of the Union pour la Verité publishes, in its issue for January 1, 1911, an interesting account of this flight.
Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana suddenly on October 28, 1910 (November 10th European style) about five o’clock in the morning. He was accompanied by Dr. Makovitski; his daughter Alexandra, whom Tchertkoff calls “his most intimate collaborator,” was in the secret. At six in the evening of the same day he reached the monastery of Optina, one of the most celebrated sanctuaries of Russia, which he had often visited in pilgrimage. He passed the night there; the next morning he wrote a long article on the death penalty. On the evening of October 29th (November 11th) he went to the monastery of Chamordino, where his sister Marie was a nun. He dined with her, and spoke of how he would have wished to pass the end of his life at Optina, “performing the humblest tasks, on condition that he was not forced to go to church.” He slept at Chamordino, and next morning took a walk through the neighbouring village, where he thought of taking a lodging; returning to his sister in the afternoon. At five o’clock his daughter Alexandra unexpectedly arrived. She doubtless told him that his retreat was known, and that he was being followed; they left at once in the night. “Tolstoy, Alexandra, and Makoviktsi were making for the Koselk station, probably intending to gain the southern provinces, or perhaps the Doukhobor colonies in the Caucasus.” On the way Tolstoy fell ill at the railway-station of Astapovo and was forced to take to his bed. It was there that he died.
