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Rh volted the peasantry, and was irksome to the landlords. The protection which he accorded to foreigners and his encouragement of foreign arts and sciences were a terrible grievance to the clergy and the people. To Russians a foreigner was not only a stranger, he was an alien in blood, language, and religion. They divided mankind into three categories, and, leaving aside the "Busurmani," or Mussulmans of the East, the remainder of the human family was composed of the "Slovenie," or those having the gift of speech—their own and kindred races who could comprehend, or "speak" with, each other, and of the "Nyemtsi," or the "Dumb," who could not "speak" with them, comprising all Western nations. They did not esteem them Christians, and used the same term indifferently to designate the heathen. The Russian people was the Orthodox people; their country was "Holy" Russia; the presence of a foreigner therein was pollution, and to visit foreign lands was a sin. The youths who were sent abroad by Boris for study were mourned by their families as lost beyond hope.

Boris was devout in his religious duties, and his devotion was called hypocrisy, or was attributed to remorse. He withdrew from the eyes of his subjects, and claimed veneration as the vicar of God on earth; he ordered prayers to be recited in every household, at each repast, "for the salvation of the body and soul of the servant of God, the Tsar, chosen by the Eternal, Lord of all lands of the North and of the East, the only Christian monarch of the universe, whom all other sovereigns obey as slaves, whose mind is a well of wisdom, whose heart is full of love and mercy," and his self-exaltation was deemed sacrilegious.