duke was taken sick and died, to the
inexpressible disappointment of Boris.

The Turks from Constantinople sent an embassy to Moscow with rich
presents, proposing a treaty of friendship and alliance. But Boris
declined the presents and dismissed the embassadors, saying that he
could never be friendly to the Turks, as they were the enemies of
Christianity. Like many other men, he could trample upon the precepts
of the gospel, and yet be zealous of Christianity as a doctrinal code
or an institution.

A report was now circulated that the young Dmitri was still alive,
that his mother, conscious of the danger of his assassination, had
placed the prince in a position of safety, and that another child had
been assassinated in his stead. This rumor overwhelmed the guilty soul
of Boris with melancholy. His fears were so strongly excited, that
several nobles, who were supposed to be in the interests of the young
prince, were put to the rack to extort a confession. But no positive
information respecting Dmitri could be gained. The mother of Dmitri
was banished to an obscure fortress six hundred miles from Moscow.

The emissaries of Boris were everywhere busy to detect, if possible,
the hiding place of Dmitri. Intelligence was at length brought to the
Kremlin that two monks had escaped from a convent and had fled to
Poland, and that it was apprehended that one of them was the young
prince in disguise; it was also said that Weisnowiski, prince of Kief,
was protector of Dmitri, and, in concert with others, was preparing a
movement to place him upon the throne of his ancestors. Boris was
thrown into paroxysms of terror. Not knowing what else to do, he
franticly sent a party of Cossacks to murder Weisnowiski; but the
prince was on his guard, and the enterprise failed.

The question, "Have we a Bourbon among us?" has agitated the whole of
the United States. The question, "Have we a Dmitri among us?" then
agitated Russia far more intensely. It was a question of the utmost
practical importance, involving civil war and the removal of the new
dynasty for the restoration of the old. Whether the person said to be
Dmitri were really such, is a question which can now never be settled.
The monk Griska Utropeja, who declared himself to be the young prince,
sustained his claim with such an array of evidence as to secure the
support of a large portion of the Russians, and also the cooeperation
of the court of Poland. The claims of Griska were b