Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/151

 Rh After this fashion, in the year 1547, the Tsar's choice fell on Anastasia, the fatherless daughter of Iouriévitch Zakharine-Kochkine, of an ancient boïar family, which, amidst the ruin of the princely families, had contrived, thanks to an avoidance of those perilous rivalries from which the young Sovereign had suffered so bitterly, to retain its place close to the throne. It is not impossible, indeed, that even on this occasion the customary competition was a mere matter of form. The Zakharine-Kochkine were favourites of Fortune. Like the Chérémétiev, the Kolytchev, and the Kobyline, they were said to be the descendants of a certain Andrew Kobyla, a Prussian fugitive, so the chroniclers assert. But the national vanity, at a later date, turned 'Prussia' into 'Novgorod'—there was a quarter of that city the denizens of which were commonly called Prussians. Kobyla's Slav origin cannot be contested. His very name proves it. Kobyla stands for 'mare' both in Russian and Polish, and it is a well-known fact that the present capital of the Germanic nation stands on Slav soil.

We have no details concerning Ivan's marriage, but those given in the preceding chapter of this work are applicable to the occasion. The young Tsar was as much in love with his wife as his father had been before him, and long years afterwards he was to call up, with bitter regret, the joys, all too soon cut down, of a union in which he seems to have found every satisfaction and pleasure known to body, heart, and mind. But his honeymoon was soon and cruelly disturbed. He was married on February 3, 1547. Less than three months after that date, a whole quarter of his capital was destroyed by fire. Ivan was torn from the sweet peace in which he had seemed to revel, and which those about him had rejoicingly accepted as the guerdon of a happier future. The fair and gracious Anastasia was already looked on as the good angel destined to dispel the Sovereign's fits of fury, and insure his subjects' peace. But this was but a dream, and it may well be, in a country which is the home of legend, that an influence the visible effects of which are not attributable to any permanent cause was somewhat magnified. Ivan's irritable nature, which had slumbered for a time, woke suddenly to life. When the inhabitants of Pskov came, in their turn, on June 30, 1547, to make a complaint against their governor, the Tsar gave them a worse reception than that he had bestowed on their fellows of Novgorod. Returning to the cruel pastime of his boyish days, he poured lighted brandy all over them, and then, having had them stripped, would have proceeded, no doubt, to put them to death, had not a lucky diversion turned his mind from this particular form of entertainment.