“It is an evil sign; the insubordination has reached serious proportions, and there is no master hand upon the rein. We have had two benevolent rulers,—his late majesty, and the Czar Alexis; we need now another, Ivan the Terrible. The rabble is breaking its bonds, and woe to Russia’s rulers when the reckoning day comes!”
“You see it, then, as plainly as I do?” I said. “This election to-day seemed idle mockery; they have set up a boy to rule the Russias, and they can’t control the rabble of Moscow!”
“No one can foresee the end,” Von Gaden replied gravely; “the feuds are so bitter that every man feels his life to be in peril. The Naryshkins and their adherents all wore armor under their robes to-day. The patriarch turned from the side of the dead czar to ask the boyars who should rule over them, and they referred him to the free voters of the Moscovite State!”
“Le roi est mort, vive le roi!” I said dryly.
“Ay, it is ever so!” replied Von Gaden.
We had reached his home, and he ushered me in with that gentle courtesy which was one of his characteristics.
“I will take you up to my den,” he said, smiling. “I would talk freely to you, and there we can be undisturbed.”
He led me up a spiral stair, and opening a low door at the top, we entered a long, narrow room directly under the roof, and lighted only by a huge skylight. As I glanced about me, I realized that the place would furnish an admirable pretext for an accusation of familiarity with the black arts, far more plausible too than the one preferred against the book of algebra belonging to Matveief’s son. The room was bare of all luxury, furnished only in the plainest and most meager fashion, and fitted up for a laboratory. The skylight illumined the center of the apartment, leaving the corners gloomy; and out of the shadows, here and there, grinned a whitened skull, and there were various other fragments of the human anatomy about the place. The doctor’s instruments, keen and polished, were in evidence, and heavy volumes of science were piled from floor to roof, in ponderous stacks. There were many phials filled with various colored fluids, and a keen aromatic odor issued from a black kettle simmering over the fire, suspended on a hook and chain from the brick arch above the hearth. It was the very spot in which to conjure up a familiar spirit, and there was something of the same mystery and interest about the dignified figure of the Hebrew. His keen eye divined my thoughts.
“You see the palpable evidence of my nefarious schemes, M. le Vicomte,” he said, smiling. “Here is the place to brew a poison for a czar. Alas! there is no foe so dangerous as ignorant superstition, and the average Russian of to-day is even more superstitious than the rest of the world. There is one man in that court, though, who is in advance of his times; one man who is equal to taking the helm, though the last one likely to be called, if the election of to-day hold.”
I glanced at him interrogatively; I always liked to hear Von Gaden’s opinions. He continued at once,—