Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/417

 Rh The Tsar was here alluding to a most extraordinary story. Giovanni Tetaldi, a Florentine agent, who lived in Russia from 1551 to 1565, and whose recollections have been published by Monsieur Chmourlo (St. Petersburg, 1891), speaks of certain mummies, the introduction of which into the country would seem to have resulted in a smuggling trial, complicated by aggravating circumstances. These embalmed corpses, imported from Africa via Constantinople, were, it appears, much sought after in Russia, and there was a considerable traffic in them, which, like that of all kinds of spices, was in the hands of the Jews. To play a trick on some of these, a Polish merchant sent them, as though it had been a mummy, the body of a recently executed criminal, which he had previously stuffed with aromatic herbs. Mummies paid no entrance duty, and the Jews were accused of habitually and fraudulently introducing, under this name, products liable to a very heavy tax. To this sin the popular imagination had added homicidal intentions. Ivan does not seem, however, to have taken any pains to clear the matter up, being quite satisfied with the repugnance with which the Jews inspired him personally. This man of impulse was, after his own fashion, likewise a man of sentiment.

No one can deny that there was a great deal of sentiment in the fixed idea of going to England which he nursed until he died. That was the romance of his life, and though he did not overlook the practical side of the adventure, he put a great deal of fancy into it. The alliance against Batory and the marriage with Mary Hastings were part of the same dream.

Ivan's exceedingly personal conception of his part and way of playing it, his impetuous vigour of action, his exuberant mimicry, his fulness of gesture and redundance of language, have built up the illusion as to his having been a sort of hero-Cossack, out of the cycle of Ilia of Mourom. It must be admitted, indeed, that this cycle was only definitely closed in Russia by the reforms of the eighteenth century, and that up till that date the existence of the race ruled by Peter the Great was spent in a series of exploits, and lulled by the harmonious chantings of its rustic bards. Ivan shares with Ilia of Mourom that quality of humour which still exists in the national temperament, and his fits of furious rage. But the Tsar's psychology is far the more complicated of the two. Behind the external mask which imparts a family resemblance to these figures, and in spite of the dreamy quality common to both, we note, in Ivan’s case, a great depth of realism. After he passed away, leaving his iron sceptre in feeble hands, and carrying the secret of his all-powerfulness with him into his grave, his people was to sing on, and dream on, for another century. But he had shaken it rudely once, and his life had