It is said the
impostor who posed as Ivan's son might have succeeded had he not been
too kind, he showed clemency to Shuisky and his enemies and did not
have them torn to pieces, so the people would not believe he could be
the Terrible's son! And they chased him to that window you remember we
saw in the old palace of the Kremlin and there he had to throw himself
out."
"It makes one wonder what can arise from a history of such horrible
crimes," Tamara said.
"You must not forget that the country is practically three hundred
years behind the times, though," Stephen Strong went on. "No doubt
quite as great horrors marked others if we look at them at an
equivalent stage of development. It is missing this point which makes
most strangers, and many foreign historians, so unjust to Russia and
her people. The national qualities are immeasurably great, but as a
civilized nation they are so very young."
"I believe one could grow to love them," Tamara said. "I have never had
the feeling that I am among strangers since I have been here."
Then she wondered vaguely why Stephen Strong smiled softly to himself.
By the end of dinner, Gritzko's eyes were blazing, and he suggested
every sort of astonishing way to spend the night. But Princess
Ard?cheff, as the doyenne of the party, prudently put her foot down,
and insisted upon bed. For had they not a whole morning of sight-seeing
still to do on the morrow, and then their thirty versts in troikas to
arrive at Milasl?v.
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