Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/153

 Rh sented themselves at Vorobiévo, clamouring for fresh victims. Andrew Chouïski's relations and adherents, who had been exiled after his execution, and subsequently recalled and restored to the Sovereign’s household and favour, urged him on to bloody reprisals.

But Ivan was soon to reveal himself. It was a tragic and decisive hour. If the son of Vassili had yielded to this criminal pressure he would have entered on a course which would have made his only mark on history a mark of blood. To yield was not in his nature. A merciless judge he was—too merciless very often—but he was always to hold full mastery over his own judicial acts. Whatever he thought of the accusation—and at his age, especially, and superstitious as he was, like all his contemporaries, he may very well have thought it plausible—accusers who were bold enough to encroach on his own rights by dictating or even forestalling his decisions struck him, no doubt, as being more guilty than any incendiary, genuine or supposed. He rose up, showed himself as he was, established his reputation. Behind the tyrant the Russians knew already, they perceived the Sovereign they were about to know. Michael Glinski, who had fled towards the Lithuanian frontier, had been caught by one of the Chouïski, Peter by name. Ivan had set him free, and he would not have the mother touched. The executioner had work to do, but the heads he took off belonged to the abettors of disturbance, who had hoped to build their own fortunes, or gratify their own resentments, on the ashes of the ruined capital.

Ivan's earliest biographer, Kourbski, has introduced an episode into his history of these events which must have misled the imagination of many of his successors. Just when Ivan was in dispute with the half-tipsy murderers, a man, an unknown priest, whose aspect resembled that given, in local iconography, to prophets, appeared in the Tsar's presence. His finger was uplifted, his expression at once threatening and inspired. With all the authority of a Divine messenger, we are told, and quoting many a Scripture text, he boldly asserted that what was happening was a manifest sign of God's wrath. He is even declared to have supported his claim by revelations and miracles. This last feature would suffice to edify us as to the nature of the story, even if we did not possess other information enabling us to reconstitute the historical truth. Sylvester, the author of the Domostroï, to whom Kourbski has chosen to attribute this curious intervention, could not have been a stranger to Ivan, seeing that for several years he had served the Church of the Assumption, the priest or proto-pope of which was, by virtue of his position, the Sovereign's own confessor. He was on friendly terms with Prince Vladimir