Chapter 2

Iván's first acts were acts of submission. They were perhaps intended to tranquillize the suspicions with which the first movements of a young prince are certain to be regarded by a jealous superior; and this purpose they effectually served. Without courage or talent for war, his powerful and subtle mind sought to accomplish its objects by intellectual superiority and by craft, rather than by force. Warned by the errors of his predecessors, he did not dispute the right of the Tartars to the tribute, but evaded its payment; and yet contrived to preserve the confidence of the khan by bribing his ministers and his family, and by a ready performance of the most humiliating acts of personal submission. His conduct towards all his enemies--that is, towards all his neighbours--was dictated by a similar policy; he admitted their rights, but he took every safe opportunity to disregard them. So far did he carry the semblance of submission, that the Muscovites were for some years disgusted with the slavish spirit of their prince. His lofty ambition was concealed by rare prudence and caution, and sustained by remarkable firmness and pertinacity of purpose. He never took a step in advance from which he was forced to recede. He had the art to combine with many of his enemies against one, and thus overthrew them all in succession. It was by such means that he cast off the Tartar yoke--curbed the power of Poland--humbled that of Lithuania, subdued Nóvgorod, Tver, Pskoff, Kazán, and Viatka--reannexed Veira, Ouglitch, Rezan, and other appanages to the crown, and added nearly twenty thousand square miles with four millions of subjects to his dominions. He framed a code of laws--improved the condition of his army--established a police in every part of his empire--protected and extended commerce--supported the church, but kept it in subjection to himself; but was at all times arbitrary, often unjust and cruel, and throughout his whole life, quite unscrupulous as to the means he employed to compass his ends.

One of the most successful strokes of his policy, was his marriage with Sophia, daughter of the Emperor Paleologos, who had been driven from Constantinople by the Turks. This alliance, which he sought with great assiduity, not only added to the dignity of his government at home, but opened the way for an intercourse on equal terms with the greatest princes of Europe. It was Sophia who dissuaded him from submitting to the degrading ceremonial which had been observed on receiving the Tartar ambassadors at Moscow--and to her he probably owed the feelings of personal dignity which he evinced in the latter part of his reign. It was this alliance that at once placed the sovereigns of Russia at the head of the whole Greek church; whose dignitaries, driven from the stately dome of St Sophia in Byzantium, found shelter in the humbler temple raised by the piety of their predecessors, some ages before, in the wilds of Muscovy, and more than repaid the hospitality they received by diffusing a love of learning amongst a barbarous people. It was by means of the Greeks who followed Sophia, that Iván was enabled to maintain a diplomatic intercourse with the other governments of Europe; it was from her that Russia received her imperial emblem, the double-headed eagle; it was in her train that science, taste, and refinement penetrated to Moscow; it was probably at her instigation that Iván embellished his capital with the beauties of architecture, and encouraged men of science, and amongst others Antonio, "the heretic," and Fioraventi Aristotle, the architect and mechanician, to settle at Moscow.

But it is time we should proceed to the story. The greater part of the first volume is occupied by an account of the family, birth, and youth of the hero. Born of a noble family in Bohemia, he is educated as a physician. This was not the voluntary act of his parents; for what haughty German baron of those times would have permitted his son to degrade himself by engaging in a profession which was then chiefly occupied by the accursed Jews? No, this was a degradation prepared for the house of Ehrenstein, by the undying revenge of a little Italian physician, whom the stalwart baron had pitched a few yards out of his way during a procession at Rome. This part of the history, though not devoid of interest, is hardly within the bounds of a reasonable probability--but it contains some passages of considerable vigour. The patient lying in wait of the revengeful Italian, and the eagerness with which he presses his advantage, making an act of mercy minister to the gratification of his passion, is not without merit, and will probably have its attractions for those who find pleasure in such conceptions.

The young Antonio is educated by the physician, Antonio Fioraventi of Padua, in ignorance of his birth--is disowned by his father, but cherished by his mother; and grows up an accomplished gentleman, scholar, and leech, of handsome person, captivating manners, and ardent aspirations to extend the limits of science, and to promote the advancement of knowledge and of civilization all over the earth. While these dreams are floating in his mind, a letter on the architect Fioraventi, who had for some time resided in Moscow, to his brother, the Italian physician, requesting him to send some skilful leech to the court of Iván, decides the fate of Antonio.

"Fioraventi began to look out for a physician who would volunteer into a country so distant and so little known: he never thought of proposing the journey to his pupil; his youth--the idea of a separation--of a barbarous country--all terrified the old man. His imagination was no longer wild--the intellect and the heart alone had influence on him. And what had Antony to hope for there? His destiny was assured by the position of his instructor--his tranquillity was secured by circumstances--he could more readily make a name in Italy. The place of physician at the court of the Muscovite Great Prince would suit a poor adventurer; abundance of such men might be found at that time possessed of talents and learning. But hardly was Aristotle's letter communicated to Antony, than visions began to float in his ardent brain.--'To Muscovy!' cried the voice of destiny--'To Muscovy!' echoed through his soul, like a cry remembered from infancy. That soul, in its fairest dreams, had long pined for a new, distant, unknown land and people: Antony wished to be where the physician's foot had never yet penetrated: perhaps he might discover, by questioning a nature still rude and fresh, powers by which he could retain on earth its short-lived inhabitants; perhaps he might extort from a virgin soil the secret of regeneration, or dig up the fountain of the water of life and death. But he who desired to penetrate deeper into the nature of man, might have remarked other motives in his desire. Did not knightly blood boil in his veins? Did not the spirit of adventure whisper in his heart its hopes and high promises? However this might be, he offered, with delight, to go to Muscovy; and when he received the refusal of his preceptor, he began to entreat, to implore him incessantly to recall it.--'Science calls me thither,' he said, 'do not deprive her of new acquisitions, perhaps of important discoveries. Do not deprive me of glory, my only hope and happiness.' And these entreaties were followed by a new refusal.--'Knowest thou not,' cried Fioraventi angrily, 'that the gates of Muscovy are like the gates of hell--step beyond them, and thou canst never return.' But suddenly, unexpectedly, from some secret motive, he ceased to oppose Antony's desire. With tears he gave him his blessing for the journey.--'Who can tell,' said he, 'that this is not the will of fate? Perhaps, in reality, honour and fame await thee there?'

"At Padua was soon known Antony Ehrenstein's determination to make that distant journey; and no one was surprised at it: there were, indeed, many who envied him.

"In truth, the age in which Antony lived was calculated to attune the mind to the search after the unknown, and to serve as an excuse for his visions. The age of deep profligacy, it was also the age of lofty talents, of bold enterprises, of great discoveries. They dug into the bowels of the earth; they kept up in the laboratory an unextinguished fire; they united and separated elements; they buried themselves living, in the tomb, to discover the philosopher's stone, and they found it in the innumerable treasures of chemistry which they bequeathed to posterity. Nicholas Diaz and Vasco de Gama had passed, with one gigantic stride, from one hemisphere to another, and showed that millions of their predecessors were but pigmies. The genius of a third visioned forth a new world, with new oceans--went to it, and brought it to mankind. Gunpowder, the compass, printing, cheap paper, regular armies, the concentration of states and powers, ingenious destruction, and ingenious creation--all were the work of this wondrous age. At this time, also, there began to spread indistinctly about, in Germany and many other countries of Europe, those ideas of reformation, which soon were strengthened, by the persecution of the Western Church, to array themselves in the logical head of Luther, and to flame up in that universal crater, whence the fury, lava, and smoke, were to rush with such tremendous violence on kingdoms and nations. These ideas were then spreading through the multitude, and when resisted, they broke through their dikes, and burst onward with greater violence. The character of Antony, eager, thirsting for novelty, was the expression of his age: he abandoned himself to the dreams of an ardent soul, and only sought whither to carry himself and his accumulations of knowledge.

"Muscovy, wild still, but swelling into vigour, with all her boundless snows and forests, the mystery of her orientalism, was to many a newly-discovered land--a rich mine for human genius. Muscovy, then for the first time beginning to gain mastery over her internal and external foes, then first felt the necessity for real, material civilization."

Antony pays a farewell visit to his mother at the humble tower in Bohemia, where she resided estranged from his father, of whose rank and condition she left him ignorant.

"If there were a paradise upon earth, Antony would have found it in the whole month which he passed in the Bohemian castle. Oh! he would not have exchanged that poor abode, the wild nature on the banks of the Elbe, the caresses of his mother, whose age he would have cherished with his care and love--no! he would not have exchanged all this for magnificent palaces, for the exertions of proud kinsmen to elevate him at the imperial court, for numberless vassals, whom, if he chose, he might hunt to death with hounds.

"But true to his vow, full of the hope of being useful to his mother, to science, and to humanity, the visionary renounced this paradise: his mother blessed him on his long journey to a distant and unknown land: she feared for him; yet she saw that Muscovy would be to him a land of promise--and how could she oppose his wishes?"

Preceding our hero to Moscow, we are presented to the Great Prince before Antonio's arrival. Ambassadors had come from Tver, and a Lithuanian ambassador and his interpreter had been truly or falsely convicted of an attempt to destroy Iván by poison. The Great Prince's enquiry what punishment is decreed against the felon who reaches at another's life, leads to the following dialogue:--

"'In the soudébnik it is decreed,' replied Góuseff, 'whoever shall be accused of larceny, robbery, murder, or false accusation, or other like evil act, and the same shall be manifestly guilty, the boyárin shall doom the same unto the pain of death, and the plaintiff shall have his goods; and if any thing remain, the same shall go to the boyárin and the deacon.'...

"'Ay, the lawyers remember themselves--never fear that the boyárin and deacon forget their fees. And what is written in thy book against royal murderers and conspirators?'

"'In our memory such case hath not arisen.'

"'Even so! you lawyers are ever writing leaf after leaf, and never do ye write all; and then the upright judges begin to gloze, to interpret, to take bribes for dark passages. The law ought to be like an open hand without a glove, (the Prince opened his fist;) every simple man ought to see what is in it, and it should not be able to conceal a grain of corn. Short and clear; and, when needful, seizing firmly!... But as it is, they have put a ragged glove on law; and, besides, they close the fist. Ye may guess--odd or even! they can show one or the other, as they like.'

"'Pardon, my Lord Great Prince; lo, what we will add to the soudébnik--the royal murderer and plotter shall not live.'

"'Be it so. Let not him live, who reached at another's life.' (Here he turned to Kourítzin, but remembering that he was always disinclined to severe punishments, he continued, waving his hand,) 'I forgot that a craven[2] croweth not like a cock.' (At these words the deacon's eyes sparkled with satisfaction.) 'Mamón, be this thy care. Tell my judge of Moscow--the court judge--to have the Lithuanian and the interpreter burned alive on the Moskvá--burn them, dost thou hear? that others may not think of such deeds.'

[2] A _jeu de mots_ impossible to be rendered in English; _Kourítza_, in Russian, is a 'hen.'"--T.B.S.

"The dvorétzkoi bowed, and said, stroking his ragged beard--'In a few days will arrive the strangers to build the palace, and the Almayne leech: the Holy Virgin only knoweth whether there be not evil men among them also. Dost thou vouchsafe me to speak what hath come into my mind?'

"'Speak.'

"'Were it not good to show them an example at once, by punishing the criminals before them?'

"The Great Prince, after a moment's thought, replied--'Aristotle answereth for the leech Antony; he is a disciple of his brother's. The artists of the palace--foreigners--are good men, quiet men ... but ... who can tell!... Mamón, put off the execution till after the coming of the Almayne leech; but see that the fetters sleep not on the evil doers!'

"Here he signed to Mamón to go and fulfill his order."

Here is another scene with the Great Prince.

"He stopped, and turned with an air of stern command to Kourítzin.

"The latter had addressed himself to speak--'The ambassadors from Tver ... from the'....

"'From the prince, thou wouldst say,' burst in Iván Vassílievitch: 'I no longer recognize a Prince of Tver. What--I ask thee, what did he promise in the treaty of conditions which his bishop was to negotiate?--the bishop who is with us now.'

"'To dissolve his alliance with the Polish king, Kazimír, and never without thy knowledge to renew his intercourse with him; nor with thine ill-wishers, nor with Russian deserters: to swear, in his own and his children's name, never to yield to Lithuania.'

"'Hast thou still the letter to King Kazimír from our good brother-in-law and ally--him whom thou yet callest the Great Prince of Tver?'

"'I have it, my lord.'

"'What saith it?'

"'The Prince of Tver urgeth the Polish King against the Lord of All Russia.'

"'Now, as God shall judge me, I have right on my side. Go and tell the envoys from Tver, that I will not receive them: I spoke a word of mercy to them--they mocked at it. What do they take me for?... A bundle of rags, which to-day they may trample in the mud, and to-morrow stick up for a scarecrow in their gardens! Or a puppet--to bow down to it to-day, and to-morrow to cast it into the mire, with _Vuiduibái, father vuiduibái_![3] No! they have chosen the wrong man. They may spin their traitorous intrigues with the King of Poland, and hail him their lord; but I will go myself and tell Tver who is her real master. Tease me no more with these traitors!'

[3] "When Vladímir, to convert the Russians to Christianity, caused the image of their idol Peróun to be thrown into the Dniépr, the people of Kíeff are said to have shouted '_vuiduibái, bátioushka, vuiduibái_!'--bátioushka signifies 'father;' but the rest of the exclamation has never been explained, though it has passed into a proverb."--T.B.S.

"Saying this, the Great Prince grew warmer and warmer, and at length he struck his staff upon the ground so violently that it broke in two.

"'Hold! here is our declaration of war,' he added--'yet one word more: had it bent it would have remained whole.'

"Kourítzin, taking the fatal fragments, went out. The philosopher of those days, looking at them, shook his head and thought--'Even so breaketh the mighty rival of Moscow!'"

The Almayne physician is lodged by order of the Great Prince in one of the three stone houses which Moscow could then boast--the habitation of the voévoda Obrazétz, a fine old warrior, a venerable patriarch, and bigot, such as all Russians then were. To him the presence of the heretic is disgusting; his touch would be pollution; and the whole family is thrown into the utmost consternation by the prospect of having to harbour so foul a guest--a magician, a man who had sold his soul to Satan--above all, a heretic. The voévoda had an only daughter, who, with Oriental caution, was carefully screened from the sight of man, as became a high-born Russian maiden.

"From her very infancy Providence had stamped her with the seal of the marvellous; when she was born a star had fallen on the house--on her bosom she bore a mark resembling a cross within a heart. When ten years old, she dreamed of palaces and gardens such as eye had never seen on earth, and faces of unspeakable beauty, and voices that sang, and self-moving dulcimers that played, as it were within her heart, so sweetly and so well, that tongue could never describe it; and, when she awoke from those dreams, she felt a light pressure on her feet, and she thought she perceived that something was resting on them with white wings folded; it was very sweet, and yet awful--and in a moment all was gone. Sometimes she would meditate, sometimes she would dream, she knew not what. Often, when prostrate before the image of the Mother of God, she wept; and these tears she hid from the world, like some holy thing sent down to her from on high. She loved all that was marvellous; and therefore she loved the tales, the legends, the popular songs and stories of those days. How greedily did she listen to her nurse! and what marvels did the eloquent old woman unfold, to the young, burning imagination of her foster child! Anastasia, sometimes abandoning herself to poesy, would forget sleep and food; sometimes her dreams concluded the unfinished tale more vividly, more eloquently far."

We must give the pendant to this picture--the portrait of Obrazétz himself, sitting in his easy-chair, listening to a tale of travels in the East.

"How noble was the aged man, free from stormy passions, finishing the pilgrimage of life! You seemed to behold him in pure white raiment, ready to appear before his heavenly judge. Obrazétz was the chief of the party in years, in grave majestic dignity, and patriarchal air. Crossing his arms upon his staff, he covered them with his beard, downy as the soft fleece of a lamb; the glow of health, deepened by the cup of strong mead, blushed through the snow-white hair with which his cheeks were thickly clothed; he listened with singular attention and delight to the story-teller. This pleasure was painted on his face, and shone brightly in his eyes; from time to time a smile of good-humoured mockery flitted across his lips, but this was only the innocent offspring of irony which was raised in his good heart by Aphónia's boasting, (for very few story-tellers, you know, are free from this sin.) Reclining his shoulders against the back of his arm-chair, he shut his eyes, and, laying his broad hairy hand upon Andrióusha's head, he softly, gently dallied with the boy's flaxen locks. On his countenance the gratification of curiosity was mingled with affectionate tenderness: he was not dozing, but seemed to be losing himself in sweet reveries. In the old man's visions arose the dear never forgotten son, whom he almost fancied he was caressing. When he opened his eyes, their white lashes still bore traces of the touching society of his unearthly guest; but when he remarked that the tear betraying the secret of his heart had disturbed his companions, and made his daughter anxious, the former expression of pleasure again dawned on his face, and doubled the delighted attention of the whole party."

At length the dreaded guest arrived.

"Evil days had fallen on Obrazétz and his family. He seemed himself as though he had lost his wife and son a second time. Khabár raged and stormed like a mountain torrent. Anastasia, hearing the horrible stories--is sometimes trembling like an aspen-leaf, and then weeps like a fountain. She dares not even look forth out of the sliding window of her bower. Why did Vassílii Féodorovitch build such a fine house? Why did he build it so near the Great Prince's palace? 'Tis clear, this was a temptation of the Evil One. He wanted, forsooth, to boast of a nonsuch! He had sinned in his pride.... What would become of him, his son and daughter! Better for them had they never been born!... And all this affliction arose from the boyárin being about to receive a German in his house!"

The voévoda gave strict injunctions that none of his family should go to meet the procession; but M. Lajétchnikoff knows that all such orders are unavailing.

"Curiosity is so strong in human nature, that it can conquer even fear: notwithstanding the orders of the boyárin, all his servants rushed to obtain a glance at the terrible stranger; one at the gate, another through the crevices of the wooden fence, another over it. Khabár, with his arms haughtily a-kimbo, gazed with stern pride from the other gate. Now for the frightful face with mouse's ears, winking owlish eyes streaming with fiendish fire! now for the beak! They beheld a young man, tall, graceful, of noble deportment, overflowing with fresh vigorous life. In his blue eyes shone the light of goodness and benevolence through the moisture called up by the recent spectacle of the execution: the lips, surmounted by a slight soft mustache, bore a good-humoured smile--one of those smiles that it is impossible to feign, and which can only find their source in a heart never troubled by impure passions. Health and frost had united to tinge the cheeks with a light rosy glow; he took off his cap, and his fair curls streamed forth over his broad shoulders. He addressed Mamón in a few words of such Russian as he knew, and in his voice there was something so charming, that even the evil spirit which wandered through the boyárin's heart, sank down to its abyss. This, then, was the horrible stranger, who had harmed Obrazétz and his household! This, then, was he--after all! If this was the devil, the fiend must again have put on his original heavenly form. All the attendants, as they looked upon him, became firmly convinced that he had bewitched their eyes.

"'Haste, Nástia![4] look how handsome he is!' cried Andrióusha to the voevóda's daughter, in whose room he was, looking through the sliding window, which he had drawn back. 'After this, believe stupid reports! My father says that he is my brother: oh, how I shall love him! Look, my dear!'