Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/382

 358 whole which endues it, in our day, with such a peculiar type of its own. The great hall of the Palace, with its low vault resting on a single pillar, was ill-suited to the splendour of which it was destined to be the scene. And Ambassadors and distinguished travellers were generally received in another building, of still more modest proportions. Here and there, the furniture stood sparse and rustic—benches and stools of unpainted wood; no trace of comfort of any sort, except a certain quantity of fine carpets and, if we may believe Maskiévitch, whose Memoirs were written in 1594, a calorifère which heated the great hall, and possibly some of the rooms nearest it.

In the sixteenth century, as now, the Kremlin was above all things a little town of churches—the Church of the Annunciation, nearest the Palace, where the Tsar went to Mass every day; the Church of the Assumption, the Metropolitan's cathedral, where the Sovereigns were crowned, and whither they went to hear Mass on great feast-days; the Church of the Archangel Michael, which contained the tombs of the reigning family, and where in those days, as now, wax tapers dropped oily stains on the black palls that covered the wooden coffins; the Church of St. John, with its tall tower full of a multitude of very heavy bells, never rung, for the building would have fallen down, but sounded by moving the clappers to and fro—some score of churches altogether, crammed into a comparatively narrow space, nestling one against the other, and rubbing shoulders with monasteries; dwelling-houses reserved for the use of persons belonging to the Court, shops and workshops.

But Chancellor's first impression was to be altered when he as brought into the presence of the Tsar and his Court. He had seen the royal pomp of the Tudors and the Valois, but none the less was he astonished and delighted. The Sovereign, first of all. … Was that a mere Sovereign he beheld, seated on the famed throne, borne by four creatures modelled on the fantastic monsters of the Apocalypse? Some twenty years later, when Possevino thus saw the Tsar, robed in a long tunic-shaped garment, a tiara on his head and a crozier in his hand, he fancied himself face to face with another Pope, a Pontiff-King, a rex sacrorum. picture of the Virgin above the throne, one of the Saviour on its right, and Biblical scenes painted on all the surrounding walls, framed the monarch in a religious setting, like a god in a temple. Young warriors, with axes on their shoulders, stood on either side of him, indeed, but the Roman Pontiff had his halberdiers. And the most striking point of all, in these sacerdotal surroundings, was the attitude, preserved by every