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50 him on the frontier of his dominions for the purpose of giving him his advice in this dilemma. But as this request met with a distinct refusal on the part of Sigismund, Trepca is said to have exclaimed to him, with tears in his eyes, “Never again, O king, shalt thou see thy nephew, nor receive another message from him”; which prophecy, in fact, came to pass; for as King Sigismund subsequently left the confines of Hungary, on a religious pretext, for Dantzic in Prussia, his nephew died, together with this same Trepca, in that most disastrous slaughter, which is named, from the place, “the slaughter of Mohacz”. But now I return to the Russians.

While Vasiley Ivanovich was deliberating about his marriage, it struck him that it would be better that he should marry the daughter of one of his subjects than a foreigner, by which means he would not only spare himself very great expense, but also avoid having a wife accustomed to foreign habits and of a different religion. The suggestor of this idea was one George, surnamed the Little, the prince’s treasurer and chief councillor, who thought it likely that the prince would marry his own daughter; but at length it happened that when at the public suggestion fifteen hundred daughters of the boyars were brought together into one place, that the prince might make his selection from their number, he chose for his wife, contrary to George’s anticipation, Salomea, daughter of the boyar Ivan Sapur; but as after one-and-twenty years he had no children by her, chagrined at her barrenness, he thrust her into a convent in the principality of Susdal, in the same year that I came to Moscow, namely, 1526. When the metropolitan, upon her arrival at the convent weeping and sobbing, cut off her hair and then offered to put on the hood, she was so indignant at its being placed upon her, that she took it and hurling it to the ground, stamped upon it with her feet. One of the chief councillors irritated at the sight of this indignity,