Chapter LXXIX (1)

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland's thoughts, whatever their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.

Yet, as "restless I roll'd around my weary bed," and revolved the renewal of Vivian's connexion with a man of character so equivocal as Peacock, the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his own in the service of Trevanion, the care with which he had concealed from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion's maid, the words that had passed between them--plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still suspicious--and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian's reckless ambition, and unprincipled sentiments--nay, the effect that a few random words upon Fanny's fortune, and the luck of winning an heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious temper: when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, in the darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, more experienced in the world than myself, to advise me as to the course I ought to pursue. Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what?--the character of a servant, or the designs of the fictitious Gower? Against the first I could say, if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without, not indeed betraying his confidence--for that he had never given me--but without belying the professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever were his real secrets to Trevanion; and, if not, I might indeed ruin his prospects by revealing the aliases he assumed. But wherefore reveal, and wherefore warn? Because of suspicions that I could not myself analyse--suspicions founded on circumstances most of which had already been seemingly explained away? Still, when morning came, I was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland's countenance, and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care, that I had no option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in his strong understanding and unerring sense of honour, I wandered out, hoping that in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts, and solve the problem that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And, this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon Lady Ellinor, and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.

Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, borne by post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement--scattering to the right and left all humbler equipages--and hurried, as if on an errand of life and death, up the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland Place. But, rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen distinctly the face of Fanny Trevanion in the carriage, and that face wore a strange expression, which seemed to me to speak of anxiety and grief; and, by her side--was not that the woman I had seen with Peacock? I did not see the face of the woman, but I thought I recognised the cloak, the bonnet, and peculiar turn of the head. If I could be mistaken there, I was not mistaken at least as to the servant on the seat behind. Looking back at a butcher's boy, who had just escaped being run over, and was revenging himself by all the imprecations the Diræ of London slang could suggest, the face of Mr Peacock was exposed in full to my gaze.

My first impulse, on recovering my surprise, was to spring after the carriage; in the haste of that impulse, I cried "Stop!" But the carriage was out of sight in a moment, and my word was lost in air. After pausing for a moment, full of presentiments of some evil--I knew not what--I then altered my course, and stopped not till I found myself, panting and out of breath, in St James's Square--at the door of Trevanion's house--in the hall. The porter had a newspaper in his hand as he admitted me.

"Where is Lady Ellinor? I must see her instantly."

"No worse news of master, I hope, sir?"

"Worse news of what?--of whom?--of Mr Trevanion?"

"Did you not know he was suddenly taken ill, sir; that a servant came express to say so last night. Lady Ellinor went off at ten o'clock to join him."

"At ten o'clock last night?"

"Yes, sir; the servant's account alarmed her ladyship so much."

"The new servant, who had been recommended by Mr Gower?"

"Yes, sir--Henry," answered the porter staring at me. "Please, sir, here is an account of master's attack in the paper. I suppose Henry took it to the office before he came here, which was very wrong in him; but I am afraid he's a very foolish fellow."

"Never mind that, Miss Trevanion--I saw her just now--_she_ did not go with her mother; Where was she going, then?"

"Why, sir--but pray step into the parlour."

"No, no--speak."

"Why, sir, before Lady Ellinor set out, she was afraid that there _might_ be something in the papers to alarm Miss Trevanion, and so she sent Henry down to Lady Castleton's, to beg her ladyship to make as light of it as she could; but it seems that Henry blabbed the worst to Mrs Mole,--"

"Who is Mrs Mole?"

"Miss Trevanion's maid, sir--a new maid; and Mrs Mole blabbed to my young lady, and so she took fright, and insisted on coming to town. And Lady Castleton, who is ill herself in bed, could not keep her, I suppose--especially as Henry said, though he ought to have known better, 'that she would be in time to arrive before my lady set off.' Poor Miss Trevanion was so disappointed when she found her mamma gone. And then she would order fresh horses, and would go on, though Mrs Bates (the housekeeper, you know, sir) was very angry with Mrs Mole, who encouraged Miss; and--"

"Good heavens! Why did not Mrs Bates go with her?"

"Why, sir, you know how old Mrs Bates is, and my young lady is always so kind that she would not hear of it, as she is going to travel night and day; and Mrs Mole said she had gone all over the world with her last lady, and that--"

"I see it all. Where is Mr Gower?"

"Mr Gower, sir!"

"Yes! Can't you answer?"

"Why, with Mr Trevanion, I believe, sir."

"In the north--what is the address?"

"Lord N----, C---- Hall, near W----"

I heard no more.

The conviction of some villanous snare struck me as with the swiftness and force of lightning. Why, if Trevanion were really ill, had the false servant concealed it from me? Why suffered me to waste his time, instead of hastening to Lady Ellinor? How, if Mr Trevanion's _sudden_ illness had brought the man to London--how had he known so long beforehand (as he himself told me, and his appointment with the waiting woman proved) the day he should arrive? Why now, if there were no design of which Miss Trevanion was the object--why so frustrate the provident foresight of her mother, and take advantage of the natural yearning of affection, the quick impulse of youth, to hurry off a girl whose very station forbade her to take such a journey without suitable protection--against what must be the wish, and what clearly were the instructions, of Lady Ellinor? Alone,--worse than alone! Fanny Trevanion was then in the hands of two servants, who were the instruments and confidants of an adventurer like Vivian; and that conference between those servants--those broken references to the morrow, coupled with the name Vivian had assumed--needed the unerring instincts of love more cause for terror--terror the darker, because the exact shape it should assume was obscure and indistinct?

I sprang from the house.

I hastened into the Haymarket, summoned a cabriolet, drove home as fast as I could (for I had no money about me for the journey I meditated;) sent the servant of the lodging to engage a chaise-and-four, rushed into the room, where Roland fortunately still was, and exclaimed--"Uncle, come with me!--take money, plenty of money!--Some villany I know, though I cannot explain it, has been practised on the Trevanions. We may defeat it yet. I will tell you all by the way--come, come!"

"Certainly. But villany!--and to people of such a station--pooh--collect yourself. Who is the villain?"

"Oh, the man I have loved as a friend--the man whom I myself helped to make known to Trevanion.--Vivian--Vivian!"

"Vivian!--ah, the youth I have heard you speak of. But how?--villany to whom--to Trevanion?"

"You torture me with your questions. Listen--this Vivian (I know him)--he has introduced into the house, as a servant, an agent capable of any trick and fraud; that servant has aided him to win over her maid--Fanny's--Miss Trevanion's. Miss Trevanion is an heiress, Vivian an adventurer. My head swims round, I cannot explain now. Ha! I will write a line to Lord Castleton--tell him my fears and suspicions--he will follow us, I know, or do what is best."

I drew ink and paper towards me, and wrote hastily. My uncle came round and looked over my shoulder.

Suddenly he exclaimed, seizing my arm, "Gower, Gower. What name is this? You said 'Vivian.'"

"Vivian or Gower--the same person."

My uncle hurried out of the room. It was natural that he should leave me to make our joint and brief preparations for departure.

I finished my letter, sealed it, and when, five minutes afterwards, the chaise came to the door, I gave it to the ostler who accompanied the horses, with injunctions to deliver it forthwith to Lord Castleton himself.

My uncle now descended, and walked from the threshold with a firm stride. "Comfort yourself," he said, as he entered the chaise, into which I had already thrown myself. "We may be mistaken yet."

"Mistaken! You do not know this young man. He has every quality that could entangle a girl like Fanny, and not, I fear, one sentiment of honour that would stand in the way of his ambition. I judge him now as by a revelation--too late--oh Heavens, if it be too late!"

A groan broke from Roland's lips. I heard in it a proof of his sympathy with my emotion, and grasped his hand; it was as cold as the hand of the dead.

THE ROMANCE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY.[4]

[4] _Histoire des Conspirations et des Executions Politiques, comprenant l'Histoire des Sociétés Secrètes depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours._ Par A. BLANC. 4 Vols. Volume the Third: RUSSIA.

Professor Shaw, in the preface to his translation of Lajetchnikoff's striking and interesting romance, _The Heretic_, notices the shyness of English novelists in approaching Russian ground. "How happens it," he says, "that Russia, with her reminiscences of two centuries and a half of Tartar dominion--of her long and bloody struggles with the Ottoman and the Pole, whose territories stretch almost from the arctic ice to the equator, and whose semi-oriental diadem bears inscribed upon it such names as Peter and Catherine--should have been passed over as incapable of supplying rich materials for fiction and romance?" The question is hard to answer, and appears doubly so after reading the third volume of Monsieur A. Blanc's recent work on political conspiracies and executions,--a volume sufficient of itself to set those romance-writing who never wrote romance before. It is a trite remark, that romances, having history for their groundwork, derive their attraction and interest far more from the skill and genius of their authors than from the importance of the period selected, and from the historical prominence of the characters introduced. It is unnecessary to name writers in whose hands a Bayard or a du Guesclin, a Cromwell or a Charles of Sweden, would appear tame and commonplace. Our readers need not to be reminded of others of a different stamp,--and of one, great amongst all, the rays of whose genius have formed a halo of grandeur, glory, or fascination around persons to whom history accords scarcely a word. But such genius is not of every-day growth; and to historical romance-writers of the calibre of most of those with whom the British public is now fain to cry content, the mere devising of a plot, uniting tolerable historical fidelity with some claim to originality, is an undertaking in which they are by no means uniformly successful. To such we recommend, as useful auxiliaries, M. Blanc's octavos, and especially the one that suggests the present article. English and Scottish histories, if not used up, have at least been very handsomely worked, and have fairly earned a little tranquillity upon their shelves: the wars of the Stuarts, in particular, have contributed more than their quota to the literary fund. The same may be said of the history of France, so fertile in striking events, and so largely made use of by purveyors to the circulating libraries. Italy and Spain, and even Poland, have not escaped; whilst the East has been disported over in every direction by the accomplished Morier, and a swarm of imitators and inferiors. But what Englishman has tried his hand at a Russian historical romance? We strive in vain to call to mind an original novel in our language founded on incidents of Russian history--although the history of scarcely any nation in the world includes, in the same space of time, a greater number of strange and extraordinary events.

M. Blanc's book, notwithstanding a certain air of pretension in the style of its getting up, in the very mediocre illustrations, and in the tone of the introductory pages, is substantially an unassuming performance. It is a compilation, and contains little that is not to be found printed elsewhere. At the same time, perhaps in no other work are the same events and details thrown together in so compact and entertaining a form. The author troubles us with few comments of his own, and his reserve in this respect enhances the merit of his book, for when he departs from it his views are somewhat strained and ultra-French. But his narrative is spiritedly put together; and although it will be found, upon comparison, that he has, for the most part, faithfully adhered to high historical authorities, to the exclusion of mere traditionary matter and of imaginative embellishment, yet the dramatic interest of the subject is itself so vivid, that the book reads like a romance.

The Russian history, even to our own day, is a sanguinary and cruel chronicle. Its brevity is its best excuse. The youth of the country extenuates the crimes of its children. For if the strides of Russia have been vast and rapid in the paths of civilisation, we must bear in mind that it is but very recently the progress began. "At the commencement of the eighteenth century," says M. Blanc, "it had certainly been very difficult to foresee that fifty years later a magnificent and polite court would be established on the Gulf of Finland; that soldiers raised on the banks of the Volga and the Don would rank with the best disciplined troops; and that an empire, of itself larger than all the rest of Europe, would have passed from a state of barbarism to one of civilisation as advanced as that of the most favoured European states." This is overshooting the mark, and is an exaggeration even a hundred years after the date assigned. If the civilisation of St Petersburg has for some time vied with that of London or Paris, Russia, as a country, has even now much to do before she can be placed on a footing with England or France in refinement and intellectual cultivation. It is difficult to institute a comparison in a case where the nature of the countries, the characters of the nations, and the circumstances of their rise, are, and have been, so dissimilar. The investigation might easily entail a disquisition of a length that would leave very little room for an examination of the book in hand. And all that we seek in the present instance to establish will be readily conceded--namely, that in the throes of a country accomplishing with unprecedented rapidity the passage, usually so gradual, from barbarism to civilisation, some palliation is to be found for the faults and vices of her nobles and rulers, and for the blood-stains disfiguring her annals.

The early history of Russia, from the foundation of the empire by Rurik to the reign of Ivan IV.--that is to say from the middle of the ninth to the middle of the sixteenth century--is a chaos of traditions and uncertainties, which M. Blanc has deemed unfavourable to the project of his book, and which he accordingly passes over in an introductory chapter. His business, as may be gathered from his title-page, is with the internal convulsions of the country; and these are difficult to trace, until Ivan Vassilivitch threw off the Tartar yoke, and his grandson Ivan IV., surnamed the Tyrant, or the Terrible, began, with an iron hand, it is true, to labour at the regeneration of his country. A bloodthirsty despot, Russia yet owes him much. The people, demoralised by Tartar rule, needed rigid laws and severe treatment. Ivan promulgated a code far superior to any previously in use. He invited to Russia foreign mechanics, artists, and men of science; established the first printing-press seen in the country; and laid the foundation of Russian trade, by a treaty of commerce with our own Elizabeth. By the conquest of Kazan, of the kingdom of Astracan, and of districts adjacent to the Caucasus, he extended the limits of the Russian empire. But his wise enactments and warlike successes were sullied by atrocious acts of cruelty. In Novogorod, which had offended him by its desires for increased liberty, he raged for six weeks like an incensed tiger. Sixty thousand human beings, according to some historians, fell victims on that occasion. Similar scenes of butchery were enacted in Tver, Moscow, and other cities. His cruel disposition was evident at a very early age. He was but thirteen years old when he assembled his boyarins to inform them that he needed not their guidance, and would no longer submit to their encroachments on his royal prerogative. "I ought to punish you all," he said, "for all of you have been guilty of offences against my person; but I will be indulgent, and the weight of my anger shall fall only on Andrew Schusky, who is the worst amongst you." Schusky, the head of a family which had seized the reins of government during the Czar's minority, endeavoured to justify himself. Ivan would not hear him. "Seize and bind him," cried the boy-despot, "and throw him to my dogs. They have a right to the repast." A pack of ferocious hounds, which Ivan took pleasure in rearing, were brought under the window, and irritated by every possible means. When they were sufficiently exasperated, Andrew Schusky was thrown amongst them. His cries increased their fury, and his body was torn to shreds and devoured.

Ivan dead, his son Feodor, who should have been surnamed the Feeble, as his father was the Terrible, ascended the Russian throne. He was the last of Rurik's descendants who occupied it. Even during his reign he recognised as regent of the empire his brother-in-law, the insolent and ambitious Boris Godunof. Possessed of the real power, this man coveted the external pomp of royalty. The crown was his aim, and to its possession after the death of Feodor, who, as weak of body as of mind, was not likely to be long-lived, only one obstacle existed. This was a younger son of Ivan IV., a child of a few years old, named Dmitri or Demetrius. The existence of this infant was a slight bar to one so unscrupulous as Godunof, a bar which a poniard soon removed. Feodor died, and his brother-in-law accepted, with much show of reluctance, the throne he had so long desired to fill. For the first time for many years he breathed freely; his end was attained; he thought not of the many crimes that had led to it, of the spilt blood of his child-victim, or of that of two hundred of the inhabitants of Ouglitch, judicially murdered by his orders in revenge of the death of Demetrius' assassins, whom the people had risen upon and slain; the tears of Ivan's widow, now childless and confined in a convent, and of her whole family, condemned to a horrible captivity, troubled not his repose or his dreams of future prosperity. But whilst he exulted in security and splendour, his joy was suddenly troubled by a strange retribution. Demetrius was dead; of that there could be no doubt; his emissary's dagger had done the work too surely--but the name of the rightful heir survived to make the usurper tremble. It is curious to observe in how many details Godunof's own crimes contributed to his punishment. His manoeuvres to suppress the facts of Demetrius' death, by stopping couriers and falsifying despatches, so as to make it appear that the young prince had killed himself with a knife in a fit of epilepsy, had thrown a sort of mystery and ambiguity over the whole transaction, favourable to the designs and pretensions of impostors. One of the many dark deeds by which he had paved his way to the supreme power was the removal of the metropolitan of the Russian church, who was deposed and shut up in a convent, where it was pretty generally believed he met a violent death. In lieu of this dignitary, previously the sole chief of the Russian church, Godunof created a patriarchate, and Jeremiah of Constantinople went to Moscow to install the first patriarch, whose name was Job. This prelate, whilst visiting the convent of Tchudof, was struck by the intelligence of a young monk named Gregory Otrepief or Atrepief, who could read, then a rare accomplishment, and who showed great readiness of wit. The patriarch took this youth into his service as secretary, and often carried him with him when he went to visit the Czar. Dazzled by the brilliancy of the court, and perceiving the ignorance and incapacity of many high personages, Otrepief conceived the audacious design of elevating himself above those to whom he felt himself already far superior in ability. He was acquainted with the details of the death of young Demetrius; and from some old servants of the Czarina Mary he obtained particulars of the character, qualities, and tastes of the deceased prince, all of which he carefully noted down, as well as the names and titles of the officers and attendants who had been attached to his person. Having prepared and studied his part, he asked leave to return to his convent. This was granted. His fellow-monks wondered to see him thus abandon the advantageous prospects held out to him by the favour of the patriarch.

"What should I become by remaining at court?" replied Otrepief, with a laugh: "a bishop at most, and I mean to be Czar of Moscow."

At first this passed as a joke; but Otrepief, either through bravado, or because it formed part of his scheme, repeated it so often, that it at last came to the ears of the Czar himself, who said the monk must be mad. At the same time, as he knew by experience that the usurpation of the throne was not an impossible thing, he ordered, as an excessive precaution, that the boaster should be sent to a remote convent. Otrepief set out, but on the road he seduced his escort, consisting of two monks. By large promises he prevailed with them to accompany him to Lithuania, where many enemies of Godunof had taken refuge. According to the custom of the times, the travellers passed the nights in roadside monasteries, and in every cell that he occupied Otrepief wrote upon the walls--"I am Demetrius, son of Ivan IV. Although believed to be dead, I escaped from my assassins. When I am upon my father's throne I will recompense the generous men who now show me hospitality." Soon the report spread far and wide that the Czarowitz Demetrius lived, and had arrived in Lithuania. Otrepief assumed a layman's dress, left his monkish adherents--one of whom agreed to bear the name his leader now renounced--and presented himself as the son of Ivan IV. to the Zaporian Cossacks, amongst whom he soon acquired the military habits and knowledge which he deemed essential to the success of his daring schemes. After a campaign or two, which, judging from the character of his new associates, were probably mere brigand-like expeditions in quest of pillage, Otrepief resumed the cowl, and entered the service of a powerful noble named Vichnevetski, whom he knew to have been greatly attached to Ivan IV. Pretending to be dangerously ill, he asked for a confessor. After receiving absolution: "I am about to die," he said to the priest; "and I entreat you, holy father, to have me buried with the honours due to the son of the Czar." The priest, a Jesuit, (the Jesuits were then all-powerful in Poland) asked the meaning of these strange words, which Otrepief declined telling, but said they would be explained after his death by a letter beneath his pillow. This letter the astonished Jesuit took an opportunity to purloin, and at the same time he perceived on the sick man's breast a gold cross studded with diamonds--a present received by Otrepief when secretary to the patriarch. In all haste the Jesuit went to Vichnevetski; they opened the letter, and gathered from its contents that he who had presented himself to them as a poor monk was no other than Demetrius, son of Ivan IV. Vichnevetski had in his service two Russians who had been soldiers of Ivan. Led to the sick man's bedside, these declared that they perfectly recognised in him the Czarowitz Demetrius; first, by his features--although they had not seen him since his childhood--and afterwards by two warts upon his face, and by an inequality in the length of his arms.

The Jesuits, never negligent of opportunities to increase their power, saw in the pretender to the czardom a fit instrument for the propagation of Romanism in Russia. They enlisted Sigismund king of Poland in the cause of the false Demetrius, who was treated as a prince, and lodged in a palace. Thence he negotiated with the pope's nuncio, who gave him assurance of the support of all Catholic Europe in exchange for his promise to unite Russia to the Latin church. An army of Poles and Russian refugees was raised, and the southern provinces of Russia were inundated with florid proclamations, in which the joys of an earthly paradise were offered to all who espoused the cause of their legitimate sovereign, Demetrius. The Don Cossacks, whose robberies had been recently checked by Godunof, flocked to the pretender's banner, and so formidable was the army thus collected, that the Czar began heartily to regret having paid such small attention to the words of the monk Otrepief. The Ukraine declared for the self-styled son of Ivan IV.; the voevóda of Sandomir, whose daughter he had promised to marry, acknowledged him as his prince; towns submitted, and fortresses opened their gates to the impostor, now in full march upon Moscow. Blinded by success, Otrepief fancied himself invincible; and, with scarcely fifteen thousand soldiers, he hurried to meet the Muscovite army, fifty thousand strong, and provided with a formidable artillery. Beaten, his undisciplined forces dispersed, and he himself escaped death by a miracle; but his courage was still undaunted. After a few days, during which he slept upon the snow, and subsisted upon a few grains of barley, he succeeded in rallying his scattered bands. These became the nucleus of a new army; and at the very moment that Godunof, rejoicing at his victory, prepared to chastise the nobles compromised in the rebellion, he heard that his enemy was again afoot, more formidable than ever. Furious at the news, the Czar addressed reproaches and menaces to his generals, whom he thus completely alienated; and thenceforth he was surrounded by enemies. A sudden illness soon afterwards carried him off, giving him scarcely time to proclaim his son Feodor his successor. Court and clergy, people and army, paid homage to the young Czar. Amongst others, the general-in-chief of the army took the oath of fidelity; but no sooner was he again at the head of his troops, than he negotiated with Otrepief, and went over to him with all his forces. A few days afterwards the pretender was in Moscow. He strangled Feodor, and proclaimed himself Czar. Never had an impostor played his part with greater skill and such complete success. He had the art even to obtain his recognition from Ivan's widow. He recalled her relations, exiled since Godunof's usurpation, restored them their property and loaded them with honours, and then sent word to Mary that he would be to her a good son or a severe master, as she chose. The Czarina acknowledged him as her son, and was present at his coronation.

Notwithstanding the strength of this evidence, a noble, named Basil Shusky or Zulski,--of the family whose chief Ivan IV. had thrown to his hounds,--still contended against the usurper. He had himself seen the corpse of Ivan's son Demetrius, and he declared as much to his friends and partisans, whom he offered to head and lead against the impostor. Before his plans were ripe, however, he was arrested and brought to trial. Otrepief offered to pardon him if he would name his accomplices, and publicly admit that he had lied in stating that he had seen the dead body of the son of Ivan IV.

"I will retract nothing," was Shusky's firm reply; "for I have spoken the truth: the man who now wears the crown of the Czar is a vile impostor. I know the fate reserved for me; but those you uselessly urge me to betray will revenge my death, and the usurper shall fall."

As he persisted in his courageous assertions, the judges ordered him to be put to the torture. The executioner tied his hands behind him and placed upon his head an iron crown, bristling internally with sharp points; then, with the palm of his hand, he struck the top of the crown, and blood streamed over the victim's face.

"Confess your guilt!" said the judge.

The intrepid Shusky repeated his asseveration of Otrepief's imposture. The judge signed to the executioner, who again clapped a heavy hand upon the iron diadem. But suffering only augmented the energy of the heroic Muscovite, who continued, as long as consciousness remained in his tortured head, to denounce the false Czar. At last, when the whole of the forehead and the greater part of the skull were bared to the bone, he fainted and was removed. The terrible crown had been pressed down to his eyes. He was condemned to decapitation; but Otrepief pardoned him upon the scaffold, and, sometime afterwards, was imprudent enough to take him into favour and make him his privy counsellor. Shusky had vowed revenge, and waited only for an opportunity. This was accelerated by Otrepief's fancied security. One morning the false Demetrius was roused by alarm-bells, and, on looking from a window, he beheld the palace surrounded by a host of armed conspirators. The doors were speedily forced; pursued from room to room by overwhelming numbers, his clothes and the doors through which he fled riddled with balls, the Czar at last leaped from a window, and, notwithstanding serious injuries received in falling, he reached a guardhouse occupied by the Strelitz. The post was soon surrounded by an armed and menacing crowd; but the officer commanding declared he would defend his sovereign with his life.

"He whom you call your sovereign is a monk who has usurped the crown," said Shusky to the officer.

"He is the son of the Czarina Mary," was the reply.

"The Czarina herself declares him an impostor."

"Show me her written declaration to that effect, and I will give him up; but only on that condition."

Shusky ran to the convent where Mary lived in a kind of semi-captivity, told her what was passing,--that the capital was in his power, and that she could not now refuse to proclaim the imposture of the wretch who had compelled her to recognise him as her son. Mary yielded the more easily that her timorous conscience reproached her with the falsehood by which she had confirmed an adventurer in the imperial dignity; she signed and sealed the declaration demanded, and Shusky hastened with it to the officer of Strelitz. Otrepief was given up. Shusky assembled some boyarins and formed a tribunal, of which he himself was president, and before which the Czar, thus rapidly cast down from the throne to which his address and courage had elevated him, was forthwith arraigned.

"The hour of expiation is come," said Shusky. "The head you so barbarously mutilated has never ceased to ponder vengeance. Monk Otrepief, confess yourself an impostor, that God, before whom you are about to appear, may have pity on your soul."

"I am the Czar Demetrius," replied Otrepief, with much assurance: "it is not the first time that rebellious subjects, led astray by traitors, have dared lay hands on the sacred person of their sovereign; but such crimes never remain unpunished."

"You would gain time," replied Shusky; "but you will not succeed; the Czarina Mary's declaration is sufficient for us to decide upon your fate, and, so doing, we doom you to die."

Thereupon four men seized the culprit and pushed him against a wall; two others, armed with muskets, went close up to him and shot him. He struggled an instant, and then expired. His corpse, dragged by the mob to the place of common execution, was there abandoned with outrage and mutilation. His death was the signal for the massacre of the Poles, whom Otrepief had always favoured, affecting their manners, and selecting them for his body-guard. Moscow just then contained a great number of those foreigners; for Marina, daughter of the voevóda of Sandomir, had arrived a few days before for her nuptials with the Czar, and had been closely followed by the King of Poland's ambassadors, with an armed and numerous suite. After an orgie at the palace, the Poles had committed various excesses, beating peaceable citizens and outraging women, which had greatly exasperated the people. Besides this, their religion rendered them odious; and scarcely had the false Demetrius fallen when the Russian priests and monks raised the cry of massacre. With shouts of "Down with the Pope!" and "Death to the heretics!" they spread through the city, pointing out to the people the dwellings of the Poles, whose doors were already marked by the conspirators. It was a St Bartholomew on a small scale. Blood flowed for six hours in the streets of Moscow: more than a thousand Poles were slaughtered; and, when the work was done, the murderers repaired to the churches to thank God for the success of their enterprise. Shusky was proclaimed Czar by the will of the people, which, at that moment, it would not have been safe to thwart.

The brilliant success of one impostor, temporary though it had proved, soon raised up others. Shusky was no sooner on the throne than the report spread that Czar Demetrius had not been shot--that a faithful adherent had suffered death in his stead. And a runaway serf, Ivan Bolotnikof by name, undertook to personate the defunct impostor. But although he collected a sort of army of Strelitz, Cossacks, and peasants, glad of any pretext for pillage, and although he was recognised by two powerful princes, one of whom, strange to say, was his former owner, Prince Téliatevski, his abilities and his success were alike far inferior to those of Otrepief. Astracan and several other towns revolted in his favour; but Shusky marched against him, won a battle, in which Téliatevski was killed, and besieged Toula, in which Bolotnikof and the other chiefs of the revolt had shut themselves up. "The besieged," says M. Blanc, "defended themselves vigorously"; but Shusky, by the advice of a child, who was assuredly born with the genius of destruction, stopped the course of the Oupa, by means of a dike made below the town, through which the river flowed. The topographical position of the town was such that in a few hours it was completely under water. Many of the inhabitants were drowned; defence became impossible; and Bolotnikof, seized by his mutinous followers, was given up to Shusky. This second false Demetrius was forthwith shot; but his fate did not discourage a third impostor, who, like his predecessor, commanded armies, but never reached the throne. From first to last, no less than seven candidates appeared for the name and birthright of Ivan's murdered son. Three of them were promptly crushed; the seventh audaciously asserted that he united in his person not only the true Demetrius, whom Godunof had assassinated, but also the one whom Shusky had dragged from the throne, and two of the subsequent impostors. This was rather a strong dose even for Cossacks to swallow; but these gentlemen rejoiced at the prospect of booty, affected to credit the tale, and bore the pretender's banner to within a short distance of Moscow. There his career terminated. A Cossack chief, who had often seen Otrepief, finding himself in the presence of the seventh Demetrius, declared aloud that he was not the Czar he had served, arrested the impostor with his own hand, and hung him on a neighbouring tree.

The annals of this period of Russian history are painful from the atrocities they record; and M. Blanc is prodigal of horrors. The interval of a quarter of a century between the extinction of the line of Rurik and the accession of the Romanoff dynasty, still paramount in Russia, was occupied by constant struggles between usurpers and pretenders, none of whom dreamed of a milder fate than death for the foe who fell into their hands. And happy was the vanquished chief who escaped with a prompt and merciful death by axe or bullet. The most hideous tortures were put in practice, either for the extortion of confessions, or for the gratification of malice. Even Shusky, whom we have shown enduring with noble fortitude the agonising pressure of the iron crown, learned not mercy from suffering. His treatment of an enthusiastic boyarin, sent by the third false Demetrius to summon him to vacate the throne, was such as Red Indians or Spanish inquisitors might have shuddered to witness. It is recorded, in all its horrible details, at page 52 of the _Histoire des Conspirations_, &c. The torture of individuals, which was of frequent occurrence, was varied from time to time by the massacre of multitudes. We have mentioned that of the Poles. In 1611, after Shusky's dethronement, it was the turn of the Muscovites. The Poles having seized Moscow, insisted that Vladislaus, son of the King of Poland, should be elected Czar. The nobles consented, but the patriarch steadily refused his consent; and, by the law of the land, his opposition nullified the election. Thereupon the Poles ran riot in the city, plundering, murdering, and ravishing; and at last, unsheathing the sword for a general slaughter, twenty thousand men, women, and children fell in one day beneath the murderous steel. A Muscovite army then closely blockaded the place: and the Poles were reduced to the greatest extremity of famine. They at last surrendered on condition of their lives being spared, notwithstanding which compact many were massacred by the Cossacks. "And yet," says M. Blanc, "the aspect of the town was well calculated to excite compassion rather than hatred. In the streets the cadaverous and emaciated inhabitants looked like spectres; in the houses were the remains of unclean animals, fragments of repasts horrible to imagine; and what is still more frightful, perhaps unprecedented, salting tubs were found, _filled with human flesh_."

It was under the reign of Alexis, the second Romanoff and father of Peter the Great, that there appeared in Russia the most extraordinary robber the world ever saw. He claimed not to be a Czar or the son of a Czar; the Demetrius mask was out of date, and one real and another pretended son of Otrepief and Marina had been executed by order of Alexis. The new adventurer was a common Cossack from the Don, who went by his own name of Stenka Razin, and to whom M. Blanc attributes, perhaps with a little exaggeration, the ambition, courage, and ferocity of a Tamerlane. In those days the Russian territory was by no means free from robbers, who pillaged caravans of merchandise, but generally respected the property of the Czar and the principal nobles, lest they should make themselves powerful enemies. Razin's first act was to throw down the glove to his sovereign. He seized a convoy belonging to the court, and hung some gentlemen who endeavoured to defend it. The fame of his intrepidity and success brought him many followers, and soon he was at the head of an army. "He embarked on the Caspian Sea, and cruised along its shores, frequently landing and seizing immense booty. At the mouth of the Yaik he was met by an officer of the Czar's, sent by the voevóda of Astracan to offer him and his companions a free pardon on condition of their discontinuing their robberies. Razin replied that he was no robber, but a conqueror; that he made war, and suffered none to fail in respect towards him. And to prove his words, he hung the officer, and drowned the men of his escort. A numerous body of Strelitz was then sent against him. Razin beat the Strelitz, seized the town of Yatskoi, massacred the garrison and the inhabitants, and passed the winter there unmolested. In the spring he marched into Persia." There he accumulated immense booty, but was at last expelled by a general rising of the population. On his return to Russia he was soon surrounded by troops; but even then, such was the terror of his name, the Russian general granted him a capitulation, by which he and his men were permitted to retire to their native provinces, taking their plunder with them; and their security was guaranteed so long as they abstained from aggression. This scandalous convention was ratified by Alexis, but was not long adhered to by the bandit with whom the Czar thus meanly condescended to treat as an equal. Stenka's next campaign was even more successful than the previous one. Bodies of troops deserted to him, and several towns fell into his power; amongst others, that of Astracan, where frightful scenes of violence and murder were enacted--Razin himself parading the streets, intoxicated with brandy, and stabbing all he met. He was marching upon Moscow, with the avowed intention of dethroning the Czar, when he sustained a reverse, and, after fighting like a lion, was made prisoner, and sent in fetters to the city he had expected to enter in triumph. Taken before Alexis, he replied boldly and haughtily to the Czar's reproaches and threats. The only anxiety he showed was to know what manner of death he was to suffer. He had heard that, in the previous year, an obscure robber and assassin, who pillaged convents and churches, had been cut into pieces of half a finger's breadth, beginning at the toes. This barbarous punishment, of which several instances are cited in M. Blanc's book, was known as the "torture of the ten thousand pieces." "But," exclaimed Stenka Razin, with a sort of terror, so horrible did this death appear to him, "I am no robber of monks! I have commanded armies. I have made peace with the Czar, therefore I had a right to make war upon him. Is there not a man amongst you brave enough to split my head with a hatchet?" The Strelitz guards, to whom these words were addressed, refused the friendly office, and Razin heard himself condemned to be quartered alive. He seemed resigned, as if he considered this death an endurable medium between the decapitation he had implored of his judges and the barbarous mincing he had been led to expect. But his energy forsook him on the scaffold, and the man who had so often confronted and inflicted death, received it in a swooning state.

The characters of few sovereigns admit of being judged more variously than that of Peter I. of Russia, surnamed the Great. According to the point of view whence we contemplate him, we behold the hero or the savage; the wise legislator or the lawless tyrant; the patient pursuer of science or the dissolute and heartless debauchee. In the long chapter given to his romantic and eventful reign, M. Blanc shows him little favour. In a work treating of conspiracies and executions, the characters of the sovereigns introduced are naturally not exhibited under their most amiable aspect, especially when those sovereigns are Russian czars and czarinas, to whom lenity has generally been less familiar than severity, and pardon than punishment. The pen of Voltaire has done much for the reputation of Peter the Great, who to us has always appeared an overrated personage. Historians have vaunted his exploits and good deeds, till his crimes and barbarities have been lost sight of in the glitter of panegyric. The monarch who could debase himself to the level of an executioner, beheading his rebel subjects with his own hand, and feasting his eyes with the spectacle of death when he himself was weary of slaying; who could condemn his wife, repudiated without cause, to the frightful torture of the knout, and sign the order, which it is more than suspected he himself executed, for the death of his own son--may have been great as a warrior and a legislator, but must ever be execrated as a man. Peter was certainly an extraordinary compound of vices and virtues. His domestic life will not bear even the most superficial investigation, and M. Blanc has ripped it up unmercifully. The great reformer--we might almost say the founder--of the mighty empire of Russia, the conqueror of Charles of Sweden, was a drunkard and gross sensualist, a bad father, a cruel and unfaithful husband. Indeed some of his acts seem inexplicable otherwise than by that ferocious insanity manifest in more than one of his descendants. Even his rare impulses of mercy were apt to come too late to save the victim. As illustrating one of them, an incident, nearly the last event of Peter's life, is given by M. Blanc, in more minute detail than we ever before met with it. Peter's whole life was a romance; but this is assuredly one of its most romantic episodes. A short time before his death, according to M. Blanc, although other writers fix the date some years earlier, Peter was violently smitten by the charms of a young girl named Ivanowa. Although tenderly attached, and about to be married to an officer of the regiment of Schouvaloff, she dared not oppose the Czar's wishes, but became his mistress. Peter, who took her repugnance for timidity, fancied himself beloved, and passed much of his time in her society, in a charming cottage in which he had installed her at one of the extremities of St Petersburg. He had enriched her family, who were ignorant, however, of her retreat. Her betrothed, whose name was Demetrius Daniloff, was in despair at her disappearance, and made unceasing efforts to discover her, but all in vain, until Ivanowa, having made a confidant of a Livonian slave, had him conducted to her presence. The lovers' meetings were then frequent, so much so, that Peter received intelligence of them. "His anger was terrible; he roared like a tiger.

'Betrayed! betrayed everywhere and always!' cried he, striding wildly about the room, and striking his brow with his clenched fist. 'Oh! revenge! revenge!'

Before the close of day he left the palace, alone, wrapped in a coarse cloak, his feet in nailed shoes whose patches attested their long services, his head covered with a fox-skin cap which came down over his eyebrows and half concealed his eyes. He soon reached Ivanowa's house, where the lovers deemed themselves perfectly secure, for the Czar had spread a report of his departure for Moscow. Moreover, the faithful Livonian slave kept watch in the antechamber, to give an alarm at the least noise. Peter knew all this, and had taken his measures accordingly. Opening an outer door with a key of his own, he bounded into the anteroom, upset the slave, and, with a kick of his powerful foot, burst the door that separated him from the lovers. All this occurred with the speed of lightning. Daniloff and Ivanowa had scarce time to rise from their seats, before the Czar stood over them with his drawn sword in his hand. Ivanowa uttered a cry of terror, fell on her knees, and fainted. Prompt as the Czar, Daniloff bared his sabre and threw himself between his mistress and Peter. The latter lowered his weapon.

'No,' he said, 'the revenge were too brief.'

He opened a window and cried _hourra_! At the signal, a hundred soldiers crowded into the house. Mastering his fury, the Czar ordered the young officer to be taken to prison, there to receive one hundred blows of the _battogues_ or sticks. Ivanowa was also confined until the senate should decide on her fate. The next day Daniloff received his terrible punishment. Before half of it had been inflicted, his back, from, the loins to the shoulders, was one hideous wound," &c. &c. We omit the revolting details. "Nevertheless the executioners continued to strike, and the hundred blows were counted, without a complaint from the sufferer. The unfortunate Daniloff had not even fainted; he got up alone,[5] when untied, and asked to have his wounds carefully dressed.

[5] The victim is placed upon his belly (and tied down so that he cannot change his position) to receive this terrible punishment, in severity inferior only to the knout.

'I have need to live a short time longer,' he added."

Meanwhile Ivanowa was brought before the senate, and accused of high treason and of trying to discover state secrets--a charge of Peter's invention. The supple senate, created by the Czar, condemned her to receive twenty-two blows of the knout in the presence of her accomplice Daniloff, already punished by the emperor's order. On the day appointed for the execution, Peter stood upon the balcony of his winter palace. Several battalions of infantry marched past, escorting the unfortunate Demetrius, who, in spite of the frightful sufferings he still endured, walked with a steady step, and with a firm and even joyful countenance. Surrounded by another escort, was seen the young and lovely Ivanowa, half dead with terror, supported on one side by a priest and on the other by a soldier, and letting her beautiful head fall from one shoulder to the other, according to the impulse given it by her painful progress. Even Peter's heart melted at the sight. Re-entering his apartment, he put on the ribbon of the order of St Andrew, threw a cloak over his shoulders, left the palace, sprang into a boat, and reached the opposite side of the river at the same time as the mournful procession which had crossed the bridge. Making his way through the crowd, he dropped his cloak, took Ivanowa in his arms, and imprinted a kiss upon her brow. A murmur arose amongst the people, and suddenly cries of "pardon" were heard.

"The knights of St Andrew then enjoyed the singular privilege that a kiss given by them to a condemned person, deprived the executioner of his victim. This privilege has endured even to our day, but not without some modification.

"Daniloff had recognised Peter. He approached the Czar, whose every movement he had anxiously watched, stripped off his coat, and rent the bloody shirt that covered his shoulders.

"'The man who could suffer thus,' he said, 'knows how to die. Czar, thy repentance comes too late! Ivanowa, I go to wait for thee!' And drawing a concealed poniard, he stabbed himself twice. His death was instantaneous. Peter hurried back to his palace, and the stupified, crowd slowly dispersed. Ivanowa died shortly afterwards in the convent to which she had been permitted to retire."