Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/129

 Rh the seventh, according to our present calculations. The services of the Church were regulated on this system of timing, and all other occupations were based on these. These, in the aristocratic class, beyond that of passing from one orison to another till dinner-time came, were very few. After dinner a siesta was absolutely indispensable. The very tradesmen shut up their shops, and nobody worked but the barbers, who removed overluxuriant tresses on one of the Moscow spaces, known as the 'Square of Lice.' There was a good reason for this period of repose. People ate a great deal; they loaded their stomachs with a huge quantity of food, often of a most indigestible nature, and Dimitri the impostor betrayed his true origin by neglecting this national habit.

For the wife of a rich boïar, the whole of life consisted in praying, eating, and sleeping. Other women had their household duties, but their life was one of toil, of convict labour. The boïarina, born to idleness and stupefied by it, would not even take the trouble to embroider some church ornament, except to lighten her own unbearable ennui. And boredom was not the most dangerous guest in a conjugal existence constituted after the fashion we have noted. How many ill-assorted unions did it create! How great the risk of consequent conflict! Did not the law provide a special penalty for the wife who poisoned her husband? And what a hideous penalty! She was to be buried alive, her head above ground, so that her torture might be long. It sometimes ted many days. Some culprits escaped this fate by taking the veil, but they were forced to live in separate cells and wear chains.

But in most cases the woman, ill-treated, outraged, and not unfrequently forsaken, avenged herself on these unions, in which love was so seldom her portion, through love. Closely watched as she was, she generally succeeded in 'putting her husband under the bench,' as the common expression went. Even the repulsion with which the 'non-Christians,' as all foreigners were called, inspired her, did not prevent her committing adultery with them, if we are to believe the travellers of that time; and the chapter of the Domostroï which forbids the admission of gossips of doubtful reputation into the terem certainly points to the not uncommon infraction of an over-stringent law. Some of these women, who acted as go-betweens, were always to be found about the places frequented by the poorer class—wash-houses, markets, fountains—and they were also to be seen in the most respectable houses, where they generally performed a double duty, and so insured the master's favour. There was no necessity for his concealing his mistresses, for custom permitted him to take them even