As soon as Anastasia was able to leave her couch she accompanied the tzar to the monastery of Yroitzky, where his infant son Dmitri received the ordinance of baptism.  It seems to be the doom of life that every calm should be succeeded by a storm; that days of sunshine should be followed by darkness and tempests.  Early in the year 1553 tidings reached Moscow that the barbarians at Kezan were in bloody insurrection.  The Russian troops had been worsted in many conflicts; very many of them were slain.  The danger was imminent that the insurrection would prove successful, and that the Russians would be entirely exterminated from Kezan.  The imprudence of the emperor, in withdrawing before the conquest was consolidated, was now apparent to all.  To add to the consternation the monarch himself was suddenly seized with an inflammatory fever; the progress of the malady was so rapid that almost immediately his life was despaired of.  The mind of the tzar was unclouded, and being informed of his danger, without any apparent agitation he called for his secretary to draw up his last will and testament.  The monarch nominated for his successor his infant son, Dmitri.  To render the act more imposing, he requested the lords, who were assembled in an adjoining saloon, to take the oath of allegiance to his son.  Immediately the spirit of revolt was manifested.  Many of the lords dreaded the long minority of the infant prince, and the government of the regency which would probably ensue.  The contest, loud and angry, reached the ears of the king, and he sent for the refractory lords to approach his bedside.  Ivan, burning with fever, with hardly strength to speak, and expecting every hour to die, turned his eyes to them reproachfully and said,

“Who then do you wish to choose for your tzar?  I am too feeble to speak long.  Dmitri, though in his cradle, is none the less your legitimate sovereign.  If you are deaf to the voice of conscience you must answer for it before God.”

One of the nobles frankly responded,

“Sire, we are all devoted to you and to your son.  But we fear the regency of Yourief, who will undoubtedly govern Russia in the name of an infant who has not yet attained his intellectual faculties.  This is the true cause of our solicitude.  To how many calamities were we not exposed during the government of the lords, before your majesty had attained the age of reason.  It is necessary to avoid the recurrence of such woes.”

The monarch was now too feeble to speak, and the nobles withdrew from his chamber.  Some took the oath to obey the will of the sovereign, others refused, and the bitter strife extended through the city and the kingdom.  The dissentients rallied round prince Vladimir, and the nation was threatened with civil war.  The next day the tzar had revived a little, and again assembled the lords in his chamber and entreated them to take the oath of submission to his son and to Anastasia, the guardian of the infant prince.