d 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
_Vuiduibai, father vuiduibai_![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 Vladimir, to convert the Russians to Christianity, caused
the image of their idol Peroun to be thrown into the Dniepr, the
people of Kieff are said to have shouted '_vuiduibai, batioushka,
vuiduibai_!'--batioushka 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.'

"Kouritzin, 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
voevoda Obrazetz, 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 voevoda 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 s