Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/264

 240 brought him into conflict he had no resources at all—everything was a blank. Between those two products of history, the boïarstvo and the samodiérjavié, no divorce was possible. A compromise was the thing needful, and it was on a compromise that Ivan decided at this tragic moment. But he took good care not to say what he meant to do. The Russia of the sixteenth century, as we have already seen, was a country of mysteries. There was a mask on every face, and everything was hidden under some disguise.

On December 3, 1564, a Sunday, Ivan had all his treasures, his money, his plate, his gems, his furniture, and his ikons, packed on to waggons, and, followed by a huge train, many boïars chosen out of various towns, and his whole Court and household, he left his capital with his second wife, Maria Temrioukovna, a half-savage Circassian, as violent and passionate as himself. For some time, nobody in Moscow heard anything of him, and no man knew whither he had betaken himself, or wherefore he had departed. He went first of all to the village of Kolomenskoié, where bad weather detained him for a fortnight. He then spent some days at Taïninskoié, another village in the neighbourhood of Moscow, and near the Troïtsa, and finally took up his quarters in a suburb of the little town of Alexandrov, north of Vladimir. There he revealed the motives and object of his unwonted exodus. On January 3, a courier reached Moscow with a letter from the Tsar to the Metropolitan. In it the monarch, after dwelling at length on the misdeeds of the voiévodes and officials of every degree, and the clergy, upper and lower, declared he had 'laid his anger' on them all, from the greatest to the least. This was what was called the Opala, a sort of ban, which placed all those affected by it in a state of disgrace and incapacity to perform any active function, whether about the Court or in the service of the State. At the same time Ivan announced his determination to leave the Empire and establish himself 'wherever God should counsel him to go.' There was something contradictory in the terms of the message. The Tsar was abdicating, then? And yet he used his authority to punish his subjects. But this message, again, was accompanied by another, addressed to the merchants and 'the whole Christian population of Moscow,' and its contents were to the effect that, as far as they were concerned, the Tsar had no cause of complaint, nor any feeling of displeasure.

What was the meaning of it all? Probably people knew that as partially then as they do now. But so accustomed were the Russians of that day to riddles, that they did not hesitate as to the course they should pursue. The Tsar, displeased with a certain section of his subjects, was medi-