pieces by his hounds.  This was a coup d’etat by a boy of thirteen!  He was content with the banishment of many others, and then Ivan IV. peacefully commenced his reign.  He seemed a gentle, indolent youth; very confiding in those he trusted; inclined to be a voluptuary, loving pleasure and study and everything better than affairs of state.  In 1547 he was crowned Tsar of Russia, and soon thereafter married Anastasia of the house of Romanoff, whom he devotedly loved.  As was the custom, he surrounded himself with his mother’s and his wife’s relations.  So the Glinskis and the Romanoffs were the envied families in control of the government.  His mother’s family, the Glinskis, were especially unpopular; and when a terrific fire destroyed nearly the whole of Moscow it was whispered by jealous boyars that the Princess Anna Glinski had brought this misfortune upon them by enchantments.  She had taken human hearts, boiled them in water, and then sprinkled the houses where the fire started!  An enraged populace burst into the palace of the Glinskis, murdering all they could find.

Ivan, nervous and impressionable, seems to have been profoundly affected by all this.  He yielded to the popular demand and appointed two men to administer the government, spiritual and temporal—­Adashef, belonging to the smaller nobility, and Silvester, a priest.  Believing absolutely in their fidelity, he then concerned himself very little about affairs of state, and engaged in the completion of the work commenced by Ivan III.—­a revision of the old code of laws established by Yaroslaf.  These were very peaceful and very happy years for Russia and for himself.  But Ivan was stricken with a fever, and while apparently in a dying condition he discovered the treachery of his trusted ministers, that they were shamefully intriguing with his Tatar enemies.  When he heard their rejoicings that the day of the Glinskis and the Romanoffs was over, he realized the fate awaiting Anastasia and her infant son if he died.  He resolved that he would not die.

Banishment seems a light punishment to have inflicted.  It was gentle treatment for treason at the court of Moscow.  But the poison of suspicion had entered his soul, and was the more surely, because slowly, working a transformation in his character.  And when soon thereafter Anastasia mysteriously and suddenly died, his whole nature seemed to be undergoing a change.  He was passing from Ivan the gentle and confiding, into “Ivan the Terrible.”

Ivan said later, in his own vindication:  “When that dog Adashef betrayed me, was anyone put to death?  Did I not show mercy?  They say now that I am cruel and irascible; but to whom?  I am cruel toward those that are cruel to me.  The good! ah, I would give them the robe and the chain that I wear!  My subjects would have given me over to the Tatars, sold me to my enemies.  Think of the enormity of the treason!  If some were chastised, was it not for their crimes, and are they not my slaves—­and shall I not do what I will with mine own?”