Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/249

 Rh Neither Sylvester nor Adachev lifted a finger. They did not refuse to take the oath themselves, but they observed the most cautious neutrality, and carefully abstained from taking any part in the passionate discussions which disturbed the quiet of the very chamber in which the dying man lay, and increased his suffering. The favourite's own father, the Okolnitchyï Feodor Adachev, went so far as to declare himself openly in Vladimir's favour. Thus a whole day dragged out. The next morning the Tsar was better, and Dmitri's partisans increased in number. Ina fright, Vladimir hurried to the sick-chamber, in which hitherto he had not deigned to set his foot. Those who had been faithful from the outset stopped him on the threshold, and one voice—one only—was raised to beg admittance for him—the voice of Sylvester, bound to the monarch by old ties of friendship!

Ivan recovered, and he did not forget. In performance of a vow made during his illness, he departed on pilgrimage to the monastery of St Cyril at Biélooziéro, taking his wife and son with him. If Kourbski is to be believed, Maximus the Greek endeavoured to prevent the accomplishment of this pious undertaking. The monks of Biélooziéro were the disciples of Joseph Volotski, and on his way thither, at the monastery of Piésnoché, on the Iakhroma, the Tsar was to meet an illustrious disciple of the same school, Vassiane Toporkhov, who had been exiled by the boïars in 1542. The Albanian monk is even said to have warned Ivan that his boy would die on the journey, and, whether as the result of the exposure of a delicate child to the winter weather, or of an accident—for, according to some versions, Dmitri was drowned—the prophecy came true. The Tsar brought home a corpse. But he saw Toporkov, and, according to Kourbski, again, asked his advice. What was he to do to keep his boïars in order? 'Never have anybody about you except people who are less intelligent than yourself,' was the reply. It is not very likely that the answer, which is very nearly impertinent, took this form exactly, although the story, introduced into one of the letters written by Kourbski to him, was never contradicted by the Sovereign. We may, therefore, conclude there is some truth in it. But what is still more certain is the state of reciprocal irritation and distrust which reigned between the Tsar and his boïars from the very morrow of the experience through which they had just passed. The refractory nobles' refusal to take the oath was nothing, clearly, but yet another form of their incessant protest against that new order of things of which Dmitri's succession would have been a perpetuation.

In the course of the following years the opposition grew stronger. Some historians, relying on the absence of active