Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/97

Rh the people beneath "to see the light of his eyes;" but he could not know as yet how profoundly the mighty heart of that people was moved, "as the trees of the wood are shaken with the wind."

Clear and sweet as the song of angels rose the ringing treble of the boyish choristers, who welcomed the Czar as he entered—"Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" The violet robes of the bishop and the assistant priests—the flash of innumerable jewels upon mitre, pall, and crozier—the faint perfume of incense—the sparkling drops of holy water flung from vessels worth the ransom of a king,—all these held the senses of Ivan, and wholly filled for a time his imaginative and impressible heart.

Meanwhile, the man who was the centre of all this pomp, and whose manhood for Russia in that solemn hour was more than worth it all, stood reverently in his place while the officiating bishop sprinkled him with holy water, or touched his forehead, his lips, his breast with the sacred picture. As the eyes of Ivan rested on that stately figure, peerless in its grace and majesty, a kind of awe stole over him. All the old superstitious reverence of the Russian for the Czar, who is "God upon earth," came upon him. It seemed almost an irreverence to raise his eyes to the face of the monarch; he could scarcely dare to do it.

But a "Gospodin Pomilvi" of exquisite sweetness from the choir drew away his thoughts for a moment, and involuntarily he glanced towards the spot whence the sound proceeded. Then, once again he looked where all else were looking; and suddenly a strange thing happened to him. As in a dream, he saw—instead of the gorgeous, dimly-lighted church, the gleaming vestments, the drooping banners—a green bank beside a river, a group of peasants, a cold and rigid form, a noble, compassionate face bending over it. He heard a voice that said, in tones of courageous hope, "My children, this is not death.