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 Makovitski 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. CHAPTER XVIII CONCLUSION The struggle was ended; the struggle that had lasted for eighty-two years, whose battlefield was this life of ours. A tragic and glorious mellay, in which all the forces of life took part; all the vices and all the virtues.--All the vices excepting one: untruth, which he pursued incessantly, tracking it into its last resort and refuge. In the beginning intoxicated liberty, the conflict of passions in the stormy darkness, illuminated from time to time by dazzling flashes of light--crises of love and ecstasy and visions of the Eternal. Years of the Caucasus, of Sebastopol; years of tumultuous and restless youth. Then the great peace of the first years of marriage. The happiness of love, of art, of nature_--War and Peace_. The broad daylight of genius, which bathed the whole human horizon, and the spectacle of those struggles which for the soul of the artist were already things of the past. He dominated them, was master of them, and already they were not enough. Like Prince Andrei, his eyes were turned towards the vast skies which shone above the battlefield. It was this sky that attracted him: "There are men with powerful wings whom pleasure leads to alight in the midst of the crowd, when their pinions are broken; such, for instance, am I. Then they beat their broken wings; they launch themselves desperately, but fall anew. The wings will mend. I shall fly high. May God help me!"[1]