Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/145

 Rh off gold plate. 'He certainly did not inherit that from his father. If he had, he would have begun by getting himself a better coat. And meanwhile I was suffering privations, lacking everything, even to food and clothing.' The young Sovereign suffered in his affections too. First his foster-mother had been taken from him, then, in 1543, he was deprived of his earliest friend, Feodor Siémiénovitch Vorontsov. This unhappy man, whom the Chouïski hunted into a room in the Kremlin, beat, and threatened with death, owed his bare life to the intervention of the Metropolitan; but even this could not prevent him from being exiled to Kostroma. The Metropolitan throne itself, indeed, had to suffer attack. Whenever a coup d'état placed one family or the other in power, the holder of the see changed too. In 1539, the Biélski put Jehosaphat in the place of Daniel. In 1542, when the Chouïski got the upper hand and sent Ivan Biélski to Bielooziéro, the Metropolitan shared his disgrace. The provinces received no better treatment. Under the Chouïski's rule especially, barbarity and confusion were rife. Except at Novgorod, in which town they had supporters and favoured friends, their representatives, as the chroniclers tell us, behaved 'like wild beasts.' Everybody who could took to his heels, and the towns stood empty. The Italian architect Friasini, who had been summoned to Russia, and permanently established there by Vassili, escaped and got across the frontier just when he was being sent to Siebiéje to direct the construction of the fortifications there. He told the Bishop of Derpt the boïars were making everybody’s life impossible. The Biélski were more humane, and likewise more intelligent. It was during their short tenure of power that the first charters—forerunners of the autonomous communal system—were granted. But none of these men had any idea of government save an abuse of power.

While subjecting their country to a most intolerable tyranny, they were teaching its future master the most odious of lessons. Thanks to them, violence in every form took hold of the boy's feelings and imagination, and inspired him, body and soul. Violent he was to be, like them, growing up as he did in an atmosphere of perpetual battle, ready to give back blow for blow, desperately nervous, cruel, irritable. His earliest pleasures, shared with the companions chosen for him, were hideous, like everything about him. Seeing men tortured under his eyes, he tortured beasts till he should be able to do likewise. His great amusement was to throw dogs down from the top of one of the castle terraces and enjoy their anguish. He was given his way, he was even encouraged in it. The men's turn was soon to come.