Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/77

Rh prettiest ear-rings and bracelets he could procure for Anna Popovna. The welcome he received was everything that could be desired—affectionate, enthusiastic, and admiring. There was but one exception. Michael Ivanovitch scowled upon him with undisguised ill-humour. He would like to know what brought him there, he was heard to mutter; adding that the less boyars and mujiks had to say to one another the better for both. Otherwise, his visit was a complete success. He returned to Moscow fancying himself desperately in love with Anna Popovna, and the hero of one of his favourite romances, in which princes sighed for shepherdesses and queens wedded clowns. An attack of fever, which he had shortly afterwards, and which kept him for some time confined to the house, gave him leisure to indulge his dreams and reveries.

As he grew older, the works of Voltaire and Diderot began to replace in his esteem the flimsy, unreal productions of the novelists. M. Thomassin's only genuine love was a love of pleasure, his only genuine hatred a hatred of religion. Consequently he taught his pupils just enough to make them sensualists and scoffers like himself. He bid fair to succeed as completely with Ivan as he had done with Adrian and Leon Wertsch; indeed Ivan would probably go farther than they, because his nature was stronger and his character more energetic. What has no root is easily displaced. The religion of Ivan's early years was a mere superstition, a matter of outward forms and observances; therefore, when he ceased to attach importance to these, he lost everything. "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." There was no mental conflict, there were no keen and bitter searchings of heart. From a dead faith he glided almost insensibly into a dead scepticism, and by neither the faith nor the scepticism had the profound slumber of his soul been at any time disturbed.

He continued to attend the numerous church services because