For many days the wretched inhabitants were seen wandering about, in the fields and among the ruins, searching for their children, their friends or any articles of furniture which might, by chance, have escaped the flames.  Many became maniacs, and their cries arose in all directions like the howlings of wild beasts.  The emperor and the nobles, to avoid the spectacle of so much misery, retired to the village of Vorobeif, a few miles from Moscow.  The whole population of Moscow, being in a state of despair, and reckless of consequences, were ripe for any conspiracy against an emperor and his favorites, whose iniquities, in their judgment, had brought down upon them the indignation of Heaven.

Several of the higher clergy, in cooeperation with some of the princes and nobles, resolved to arouse the energies of the populace to effect a change in the government.  The Glinskys were the advisers and instigators of the king.  Against them the fury of the populace was easily directed.  These doomed minions of despotism were pursued with fury energized by despair.  Ivan IV. was quite unable to protect them.  The Glinskys, with their numerous partisans, had returned to Moscow to make arrangements for the rebuilding of the Kremlin when the mob fell upon them, and they were nearly all slain.  In the eye of the populace, there was something so sacred in the person of their prince that no one thought of offering him any harm.

Ivan IV., astounded by this outbreak, was trembling in his palace at Vorobeif, and his truly pious wife, Anastasia, was, with tears, pleading with Heaven, when one of the clergy, an extraordinary man named Sylvestre, endowed with the boldness of an ancient prophet, entered the presence of the emperor.  He was venerable in years, and his gray locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders.  The boy king was overawed by his appearance.  One word from that capricious king would cause the head of Sylvestre to fall from the block.  But the intrepid Christian, with the solemnity of an embassador from God, with pointed finger and eye sparkling with indignation, thus addressed him: 

“God’s avenging hand is suspended over the head of a God-forgetting, man-oppressing tzar.  Fire from heaven has consumed Moscow.  The anger of the Most High has called up the people in revolt, and is spreading over the kingdom anarchy, fury and blood.”

Then taking from his bosom a copy of the New Testament, he read to the king those divinely-inspired precepts which are alike applicable to monarchs and peasants, and, in tones subdued by sadness, urged the king to follow these sacred lessons.  The warning was heeded, and Ivan became “a new creature.”  Whatever explanations philosophy may attempt of the sudden and marvelous change of the character of Ivan IV., the fact remains one of the marvels of history.  He appears to have been immediately overwhelmed with a sense of his guilt; with tears he extended his hand to the courageous monitor, asked imploringly what he could do to avert the wrath and secure the favor of Heaven, and placed himself at once under the guidance of his new-found friend.