The eruption came in the following May, when Maryna,
the daughter of the Palatine of Sandomir, made her
splendid entry into Moscow, the bride-elect of the
young Tsar. The dazzling procession and the feasting
that followed found little favour in the eyes of the
Muscovites, who now beheld their city aswarm with heretic
Poles.
The marriage was magnificently solemnized on the 18th
of May, 1606. And now Shuiski applied a match
to the train he had so skilfully laid. Demetrius
had caused a timber fort to be built before the walls
of Moscow for a martial spectacle which he had planned
for the entertainment of his bride. Shuiski put
it abroad that the fort was intended to serve as an
engine of destruction, and that the martial spectacle
was a pretence, the real object being that from the
fort the Poles were to cast firebrands into the city,
and then proceed to the slaughter of the inhabitants.
No more was necessary to infuriate an already exasperated
populace. They flew to arms, and on the night
of the 29th of May they stormed the Kremlin, led on
by the arch-traitor Shuiski himself, to the cry of
“Death to the heretic! Death to the impostor!”
They broke into the palace, and swarmed up the stairs
into the Tsar’s bedchamber, slaying the faithful
Basmanov, who stood sword in hand to bar the way and
give his master time to escape. The Tsar leapt
from a balcony thirty feet to the ground, broke his
leg, and lay there helpless, to be dispatched by his
enemies, who presently discovered him.
He died firmly and fearlessly protesting that he was
Demetrius Ivanovitch. nevertheless, he was Grishka
Otrepiev, the unfrocked monk.
It has been said that he was no more than an instrument
in the hands of priestcraft, and that because he played
his part badly he met his doom. But something
more he was. He was an instrument indeed, not
of priestcraft, but of Fate, to bring home to Boris
Godunov the hideous sins that stained his soul, and
to avenge his victims by personating one of them.
In that personation he had haunted Boris as effectively
as if he had been the very ghost of the boy murdered
at Uglich, haunted and tortured, and finally broken
him so that he died.
That was the part assigned him by Fate in the mysterious
scheme of human things. And that part being played,
the rest mattered little. In the nature of him
and of his position it was impossible that his imposture
should be other than ephemeral.
An Eposode of the Inquisition in Seville
Apprehension hung like a thundercloud over the city
of Seville in those early days of the year 1481.
It had been growing since the previous October, when
the Cardinal of Spain and Frey Tomas de Torquemada,
acting jointly on behalf of the Sovereigns—Ferdinand
and Isabella—had appointed the first inquisitors
for Castile, ordering them to set up a Tribunal of
the Faith in Seville, to deal with the apostatizing
said to be rampant among the New-Christians, or baptized
Jews, who made up so large a proportion of the population.
