Tolstoy acknowledged Strakhov's considerations to be a "weighty argument" and, promising to think it over, left the room. He had to wait a long time for the answer. Tolstoy went for a ride, had a sleep, dined, and only after his dinner called Strakhov and Alexandra Lvovna into his study and said to them: "I shall surprise you by my ultimate decision.... I want, Sasha, to leave to you alone everything, do you see? Everything, not excepting what I reserved in the declaration in the newspapers.... The details you may think over with Vladimir Grigorevich."
Strakhov informed Chertkov by telegram of the "successful" result of his conversations with Tolstoy. On 1 November, 1909, he returned to Yasnaya Polyana with Goldenweiser, this time to witness the signature of the new will by which "everything" passed to Alexandra Lvovna. This time Strakhov entered Yasnaya Polyana with a "certain pricking of conscience," because he had hid his purpose from Sophie Andreevna. The signing of the will took place in the setting of a conspiracy. Strakhov says that, when Tolstoy took the pen, "he locked the two doors of his study one after the other." And it was so strange and unnatural to see Tolstoy in the part of a man taking steps against unwanted visitors....
{ 65}. Indeed, some time before Tolstoy's going away, S. A. T.'s mind was unhinged. This became very clear in the middle of 1910. By the common consent of the family, Dr. N. V. Nikitin and the well-known alienist Rossolino were summoned from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana and they found her to be suffering from hysteria and paranoia in the early stage (see _Dela i Dni_, 1921, Number I, page 288). As regards paranoia, the data existing seem to show that the doctors were mistaken, since paranoia belongs to the class of incurable diseases and comparatively soon passes from the first to the second stage, characterized by frenzy and acute madness, from which, so far as is known, S. A. T. did not suffer. On the contrary her mental and bodily health improved considerably after Tolstoy's death. But no doubt the doctors' diagnosis of hysteria was correct. There is evidence that she had a predisposition to that disease from her birth. Her parents also suffered from lack of mental balance, as may be seen from Tolstoy's letters to his wife. We read in them: "L. A. and A. E. (her mother and father) love each other, and yet both seem to make it the purpose of their lives to irritate each other over trifles, they spoil their own lives and those of all who surround them, and especially their daughters'. This atmosphere of irritation is very painful, even to outsiders." "A. E.... is difficult because of his unceasing and overpowering care of his health, which would indeed be much better, if he thought less about it and himself." "Lyubov Alexandrovna is wonderfully like you.... Even the faults are the same in you and in her. I listen sometimes to her beginning to talk confidently about something which she does not know, and to make positive assertions and exaggerate--and I recognize you." Signs of this disease, though in a mild form, were observed in S. A. T. from the first years of her married life. But the strength of her constitution and the healthy elements of her mind for a long time had the upper hand, and the symptoms were not obviously visible. But then the bearing and nursing of children, the complicated business of the estate, the strain on the mind for many years resulting from the differences with her husband and her struggle with Chertkov--all this sapped her mental and physical powers and made it possible for the morbid characteristics to assume an acute form. Even in 1910, before Tolstoy's going away, she was definitely a sick person.