cked monk, was a natural son of
Stephen Bathory, and a Roman Catholic. Such men as Sigismund of Poland
and the Voyvode of Sandomir were not deceived on the score of his
identity. They, and no doubt other of the leading nobles of Poland,
knew the man for what he was, and because of it supported him, using the
fiction of his being Demetrius Ivanovitch to impose upon the masses, and
facilitate the pretenders occupation of the throne of Russia. And the
object of it was to set up in Muscovy a ruler who should be a Pole and
a Roman Catholic. Boris knew the bigotry of Sigismund, who already had
sacrificed a throne--that of Sweden--to his devout conscience, and he
saw clearly to the heart of this intrigue. Had he not heard that a
Papal Nuncio had been at Cracow, and that this Nuncio had been a stout
supporter of the pretender's claim? What could be the Pope's concern in
the Muscovite succession? Why should a Roman priest support the claim of
a prince to the throne of a country devoted to the Greek faith?

At last all was clear indeed to Boris. Rome was at the bottom of this
business, whose true aim was the Romanization of Russia; and Sigismund
had fetched Rome into it, had set Rome on. Himself an elected King of
Poland, Sigismund may have seen in the ambitious son of Stephen Bathory
one who might perhaps supplant him on the Polish throne. To divert
his ambition into another channel he had fathered--if he had not
invented--this fiction that the pretender was the dead Demetrius.

Had that fool Smirnoy Otrepiev but dealt frankly with him from the
first, what months of annoyance might he not have been spared; how easy
it might have been to prick this bubble of imposture. But better late
than never. To-morrow he would publish the true facts, and all the world
should know the truth; and it was a truth that must give pause to those
fools in this superstitious Russia, so devoted to the Orthodox Greek
Church, who favoured the pretender. They should see the trap that was
being baited for them.

There was a banquet in the Kremlin that night to certain foreign envoys,
and Boris came to table in better spirits than he had been for many
a day. He was heartened by the thought of what was now to do, by the
conviction that he held the false Demetrius in the hollow of his hand.
There to those envoys he would announce to-night what to-morrow he would
announce to all Russia--tell them of the discovery he had made, and
reveal to his subjects the