I glanced at the pope’s house. The shutters and doors were closed. Everything seemed quiet within.
I made my way to my own quarters and found Savelitch grieving about my absence. The news of my being set at liberty filled him with unutterable joy.
“Thanks be to Thee, Almighty God!” said he, making the sign of the cross. “At daybreak to-morrow we will leave the fortress and go wherever God will direct us. I have prepared something for you; eat it, my little father, and then rest yourself till the morning, as if you were in the bosom of Christ.”
I followed his advice and, having eaten with a good appetite, I fell asleep upon the bare floor, worn out both in body and mind.
[1] The small wardrobe, with glass doors, in which the sacred images are kept, and which forms a domestic altar.
[2] The first false Demetrius, the Perkin Warbeck of Russia. The real Demetrius was the son of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV.), and is generally believed to have been assassinated by order of Boris Godunoff, a nobleman of Tartar origin, who was afterwards elected Czar. Otrepieff’s story was that his physician had pretended to comply with the orders of Boris, but had substituted the son of a serf for him. Being supported in his claims by the Poles, the pretender succeeded in gaining the throne, but his partiality for everything Polish aroused the national jealousy of the Russians, and he was slain by the infuriated populace of Moscow, after a brief reign of one year.