helm of the tempest-torn ship of State, no one
could tell.

The young prince, Ivan IV., was but seven years of age at the death of
his mother Helene. For several days there was ominous silence in
Moscow, the stillness which precedes the storm. The death of the
regent had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that none were prepared
for it. A week passed away, during which time parties were forming and
conspiracies ripening, while Telennef was desperately endeavoring to
retain that power which he had so despotically wielded in conjunction
with his royal mistress. The prince Vassili Schouisky, who had
occupied the first place in the councils of Vassili, opened the drama.
Having secured the cooeperation of a large number of nobles, he
declared himself the head of the government, arrested all the
favorites of Helene, and threw Telennef, bound with chains, into a
dungeon. There he was left to die of starvation--barbarity, which,
though in accordance with that brutal age, even all the similar
excesses of Telennef could not justify. The beautiful sister of
Telennef, Agrippene by name, was torn from the saloons her loveliness
had embellished, and was imprisoned for life in a convent. The victims
of the cruelty of Helene, who were still languishing in prison, were
set at liberty.

Schouisky was a widower, and in the fiftieth year of his age. He
wished to strengthen his power by engaging the cooeperation of the
still formidable energies of the horde at Kezan, and accordingly
married, quite hurriedly, the daughter of the czar of the horde. But
the regal diadem proved to him but a crown of thorns. Conspiracy
succeeded conspiracy, and Schouisky felt compelled to enlist all the
terrors of the dungeon, the scaffold and the block to maintain his
place. Six months only passed away, ere he too was writhing upon the
royal couch in the agonies of death, whether paralyzed by poison or
smitten by the hand of God, the day of judgment alone can reveal.

Ivan Schouisky, the brother of the deceased usurper, now stepped into
the dangerous post which death had so suddenly rendered vacant. He was
a weak man, assuming the most pompous airs, quite unable to
discriminate between imposing grandeur and ridiculous parade. He soon
became both despised and detested. This state of things encouraged the
two hordes of Kezan and Tauride to unite, and with an army of a
hundred thousand men they penetrated Russia almost unopposed, burning
and plundering in all