Antony pays a farewell visit to his mother at the humble tower in Bohemia, where she resided estranged from his father, of whose rank and condition she left him ignorant.
"If there were a paradise upon earth, Antony would have found it in the whole month which he passed in the Bohemian castle. Oh! he would not have exchanged that poor abode, the wild nature on the banks of the Elbe, the caresses of his mother, whose age he would have cherished with his care and love--no! he would not have exchanged all this for magnificent palaces, for the exertions of proud kinsmen to elevate him at the imperial court, for numberless vassals, whom, if he chose, he might hunt to death with hounds.
"But true to his vow, full of the hope of being useful to his mother, to science, and to humanity, the visionary renounced this paradise: his mother blessed him on his long journey to a distant and unknown land: she feared for him; yet she saw that Muscovy would be to him a land of promise--and how could she oppose his wishes?"
Preceding our hero to Moscow, we are presented to the Great Prince before Antonio's arrival. Ambassadors had come from Tver, and a Lithuanian ambassador and his interpreter had been truly or falsely convicted of an attempt to destroy Iván by poison. The Great Prince's enquiry what punishment is decreed against the felon who reaches at another's life, leads to the following dialogue:--
"'In the soudébnik it is decreed,' replied Góuseff, 'whoever shall be accused of larceny, robbery, murder, or false accusation, or other like evil act, and the same shall be manifestly guilty, the boyárin shall doom the same unto the pain of death, and the plaintiff shall have his goods; and if any thing remain, the same shall go to the boyárin and the deacon.'...
"'Ay, the lawyers remember themselves--never fear that the boyárin and deacon forget their fees. And what is written in thy book against royal murderers and conspirators?'
"'In our memory such case hath not arisen.'
"'Even so! you lawyers are ever writing leaf after leaf, and never do ye write all; and then the upright judges begin to gloze, to interpret, to take bribes for dark passages. The law ought to be like an open hand without a glove, (the Prince opened his fist;) every simple man ought to see what is in it, and it should not be able to conceal a grain of corn. Short and clear; and, when needful, seizing firmly!... But as it is, they have put a ragged glove on law; and, besides, they close the fist. Ye may guess--odd or even! they can show one or the other, as they like.'