Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/225

 Rh the catastrophe to his boïars, who had been guilty of connivance with the enemy, and one of them, at least—Mstislavski—was to acknowledge his guilt; he multiplied executions, and vented his rage, incidentally, on the unlucky Swedish envoys. Yet in 1571, on his way to Novgorod, whither we shall have to follow him, and where we shall see him presiding over hideous hecatombs, he did consent to see the Ambassadors—in the street—and have an explanation with them as to Catherine. 'If she had been sent to him, everything would have been arranged. It was John's marriage with that Polish woman which had spoilt the whole business in Livonia. Since that time, the Tsar had persuaded himself she was a widow; otherwise he would never have dreamt of parting a wife from her husband and a mother from her children. But the mischief was done, now, and either he must have the whole of Livonia or the war must go on.' When the Tsar came back from Novgorod he was calmer, as if the shedding of blood had appeased him. He invited the Ambassadors to his own table, and very suddenly caused his representatives to question them as to King John's daughter. She was said to be fair, and he desired her portrait.

The Tsar was not thinking of his son, this time. He had married again, several times over, since Anastasia's death, and to the end of his life he was to interest himself in matters of this kind, much after the fashion of Henry VIII. and the tale of Bluebeard; and the report of this Swedish embassy, drawn up by its chief, Paul Junsten (Beitrage zur Kentniss Russland's, Derpt, 1816), abounds in details of a not less singular nature. Though the inclination he now manifested towards Sweden was so particularly friendly, Ivan resorted, at the same time, to his favourite system of epistolary polemics, and threw himself into them with all his usual spirit.

'You ought to tell us whose son your father was, and what was his grandfather's name! Was he a King? What Sovereigns were his friends and allies? The Emperor of the Romans is our brother, and other great Sovereigns are our brothers likewise. Can you say as much?'

Then came fresh explanations about Catherine. 'If he had known John was alive, Ivan would never have dreamt of taking his wife from him. He had always intended, indeed, to give her back to the King of Poland in exchange for Livonia. Unhappily, blood had now been shed in torrents, in consequence of this misunderstanding, and the Tsar's envoys had been ill-treated at Stockholm. Now they were great lords, not peasants, like John's envoys!' John himself, much addicted to correspondence wrote back in his best ink, but Ivan insisted.