Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/100

 76 and to that which enjoins that servants shall be treated with humanity and gentleness, well dressed and well fed. But at the same time the outline of the servant sent out to deliver a message rises up before us like a cinematographic picture. This model messenger, when he reaches the door of the house to which he has been sent, wipes his feet, blows his nose—most probably with his fingers—coughs, spits, and finally observes 'May our Saviour be praised!' If nobody says 'Amen,' he will repeat 'the remark thrice, raising his voice each time, and will then knock gently. Once inside, he will deliver his message, without blowing his nose, coughing, or putting his fingers in his nose, and then hie him home as quickly as he may.

The most salient feature of all these pictures, as of the commentaries attached to them, is the materialism pervading the domestic and social life they represent. The education of children is restricted to teaching them to dread their God and to perform manual tasks, and an extraordinary importance is attached to small household details, to the making of garments, the using up of scraps of material, the arrangement of trusses of hay and straw mats. The same tone marks every reference to social intercourse. Guests invited to a banquet must be careful not to drink too much, or sit too long at table. These are the essential points to be observed.

The book improves at the end, on which Sylvester has set his personal seal. But even here its radical dualism—asceticism on one side, sensualism on the other—comes to the front. Is the son to whom the author suggests a model of Christian existence a worldly man, a layman? At first sight one might be deceived. Not to sleep over the time for matins, never to forget the hour for going to Mass, to sing matins, complines, and nones every day, and never get drunk when he ought to be going to vespers—these are all things which may be very properly expected of a monk, as monks were in the sixteenth century. But no! The man of whom these things are asked has a house of his own, to which he is desired to bring priests who will celebrate molebni (services); he goes to market, and is admonished to give abundant alms there, not forgetting his own interests meanwhile. And this mixture of the Divine and the profane, of a virtue carried to extreme austerity and a practical wisdom verging on the cynical, runs from one end of the book to the other. To love one's fellow-creatures sincerely; to judge no man; not to do to others what we would not have them do to us; to open the door of one's house wide to the poor, the sick, and all who are distressed; to bear ill-treatment uncomplainingly; to succour one's very enemies; and to keep one's body pure by dint of necessary mortifications—all this, indeed! But also, if disputes arise, to lay the blame