fled to a fortified place
in the midst of a dense forest, where he remained a month, writing
letters to the Russians, telling them that he had abdicated and left
them to their fate as a punishment for their disloyalty and their
crimes. Singularly enough, his flight terrified the people. He had
taught them that he was their god as God was his, and his flight to
Alexandrovsky seemed to them a withdrawal of the protection of
Providence itself. Business was suspended. The courts ceased to sit. The
country was in an agony of terror. A large deputation of boyards and
priests journeyed to Alexandrovsky, and besought the sovereign to return
and resume his holy functions as the head of the church, that the souls
of so many millions might not perish. Exacting of clergy and nobles an
admission of his absolute right to do as he pleased, and a promise that
they would in no way interfere with or resist his authority, he returned
to Moscow. Here he surrounded himself with a body-guard of desperadoes,
one thousand strong at first, and afterwards increased to six thousand,
whose duty it was to discover the czar's enemies and to sweep them from
the face of the earth. As emblems of these their functions, each member
of the guard carried at his saddle-bow a dog's head and a broom. As the
punishment of the czar's enemies included the confiscation of their
property, a large part of which was given to the guards themselves,
these were always singularly successful in discovering the disaffection
of wealthy nobles, finding it out oftentimes before the nobles
themselves were aware of their own treasonable sentiments.

Feeling unsafe still, Ivan built for himself a new palace, outside the
walls of the Kremlin, making it an impregnable castle. Then, finding
that even this did not lull his shaken nerves to rest, he proceeded to
put danger afar off by dispossessing the twelve thousand rich nobles
whose estates lay nearest the palace, and giving their property to his
personal followers, so that the head which wore the crown might lie
easy in the conviction that there were no possible enemies near on the
other side of the impregnable walls which shut him in. But even then he
could not sleep easily, and so he repaired again to his forest
stronghold at Alexandrovsky, where he surrounded himself with guards and
ramparts. Here he converted the palace into a monastery, made himself
abbot, and his rascally followers monks. He rigorously enforced monastic
o