recedence among the great families was the source of endless disputes,
and no man would accept a position inferior to any held by his
ancestors, nor would serve under a man with an ancestry inferior to his
own. Feodor asked that the Books of Pedigrees be sent to him for
examination, and then had them every one thrown into the fire and
burned. This must have been his last act, for his death and this
holocaust of ancestral claims both occurred in the year 1682.

CHAPTER XIV

PETER STUDIES EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION

A history of Russia _naively_ designates one of its chapters "The
Period of Troubles"! When was there not a period of troubles in this
land? The historian wearies, and doubtless the reader too, of such
prolonged disorder and calamity. But a chapter telling of peace and
tranquillity would have to be invented. The particular sort of trouble
that developed upon the death of Feodor was of a new variety. Alexis
had left two families of children, one by his first wife and the other
by Natalia. There is not time to tell of all the steps by which
Sophia, daughter of the first marriage, came to be the power behind the
throne upon which sat her feeble brother Ivan, and her half-brother
Peter, aged ten years. Sophia was an ambitious, strong-willed,
strong-minded woman, who dared to emancipate herself from the tyranny
of Russian custom.

The _terem_, of which we hear so much, was the part of the palace
sacred to the Tsaritsa and the Princesses--upon whose faces no man ever
looked. If a physician were needed he might feel the pulse and the
temperature through a piece of gauze--but see the face never. It is
said that two nobles who one day accidentally met Natalia coming from
her chapel were deprived of rank in consequence.

But the _terem_, with "its twenty-seven locks," was not going to
confine the sister of Peter. She met the eyes of men in public;
studied them well, too; and then selected the instruments for her
designs of effacing Peter and his mother, and herself becoming
sovereign indeed. A rumor was circulated that the imbecile Ivan (who
was alive) had been strangled by Natalia's family. In the tumult which
followed one of her brothers, Peter's uncle, was torn from Natalia's
arms and cut to pieces. But this was only one small incident in the
horrid tragedy. Then, after discovering that the Prince was not dead,
the bloodstains in the palace were washed up, and the two brothers were
placed upon