Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/281

 Rh did not actually reach madness, was very close to it. I have already explained my view as to this point. I will now add that the Tsar himself has left us the most conclusive information as to his state of mind at this time. I have referred to his will, dated 1571. This instrument must be recognised, without any contradiction, as the work of a man whose feelings had been deeply and painfully wounded, but who had preserved all his faculties intact. No doubt his habitual striving after poetic effect, his inherent exaggeration of view, and of the manner in which he puts things forward, forbid our accepting what he says literally. But the very pains he takes and the artifices he employs exclude any idea of madness, at that time, at least. He certainly bewails himself, makes his complaint, pleads his own cause, too cleverly for any madman. He feels himself unsteady on his throne, and the future of his family strikes him as being no better insured than his own present. He is an exile within his own Empire, waging a struggle, the end of which he cannot foresee, with most dangerous enemies. His strength is worn out, his mind sick. He bears wounds innumerable on his body and his heart, and not a soul has he found to heal them, nor sympathize with his sufferings! His good has been returned with evil—for love he has been given hate! He admits, indeed, that his trials are the well-merited result of the Divine wrath, which has thus punished the many infractions of its law of which he has been guilty, and condemns him to live a wandering life, far from his capital, out of which 'his selfish boïars have driven him.' His sons, more happy than himself, may succeed in weathering the storm. And he desires, in the will he is now drawing up, to give them certain counsels to that end. Is he, then, making himself ready to die? Not that exactly! Death would be sweet to him indeed, and very welcome; but even this benefit, he concludes, will be refused him for a time yet, by reason of his sins, which he must expiate by leading a miserable life. Is his mind wandering? Not at all! For the advice he gives is excellent, full of the strongest and most luminous good sense, though still, it may be, marked by an excess of suspicion. Ivan is inclined to see enemies in every corner; but when, while he warns his sons against the snares that will be set for them, he counsels them to inquire personally into every business, and never to depend on others with regard to anything, unless they wish those others to obtain the real power and leave them nothing but its shadow, it is a master in the art of government who speaks, and no madman! (This will was published in the 'Historical Documents,’' Supplement, i. 222.)

And here is another and a still more conclusive proof of the complete lucidity, and, further, of the extraordinary versatility