An exceptional occasion was about to offer itself for the exercise of this heroic veracity. [1] Published in English as part of _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth._ [2] His letters of this period to his Aunt Tatiana are full of tears and of sentimentality. He was, as he says, _Liovariova,_ "Leo the Sniveller" (January 6, 1852). [3] The _Russian Proprietor_ (_A Landlord's Morning_) is the fragment of a projected _Romance of a Russian Landowner. The Cossacks_ forms the first portion of a great romance of the Caucasus. In the author's eyes the huge _War and Peace_ was only a sort of preface to a contemporary epic, of which _The Decembrists_ was to have been the nucleus. [4] See the passage relating to the pilgrim Gricha, or to the death of his mother. [5] Letter to Birukov. [6] Completed only in 1855-56. _The Two Old Men_ (1885). [7] _The Invasion._ [8] Although completed much later--in 1860--and appearing only in 1863--the bulk of this volume was of this period. [9] _The Cossacks_. [10] For example, see Oleniln's letter to his friends in Russia. CHAPTER V SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION In November, 1853, war was declared upon Turkey. Tolstoy obtained an appointment to the army of Roumania; he was transferred to the army of the Crimea, and on November 7, 1854, he arrived in Sebastopol. He was burning with enthusiasm and patriotic faith. He went about his duties courageously, and was often in danger, in especial throughout the April and May of 1855, when he served on every alternate day in the battery of of the 4th bastion. Living for months in a perpetual tremor and exaltation, face to face with death, his religious mysticism revived. He became familiar with God. In April, 1855, he noted in his diary a prayer to God, thanking Him for His protection in danger and beseeching Him to continue it, "so that I may achieve the glorious and eternal end of life, of which I am still ignorant, although I feel a presentiment of it." Already this object of his life was not art, but religion. On March 5, 1855, he wrote: "I have been led to conceive a great idea, to whose realisation I feel capable of devoting my whole life. This idea is the foundation of a new religion; the religion of the Christ, but purified of dogmas and mysteries.... To act with a clear conscience, in order to unite men by means of religion."[1] This was to be the programme of his old age.