with Basmanov at his right hand to help and guide him. And at
first all went well, and the young Tsar earned a certain measure
of popularity. If his swarthy face was coarse-featured, yet his
bearing was so courtly and gracious that he won his way quickly
to the hearts of his people. For the rest he was of a tall,
graceful figure, a fine horseman, and of a knightly address at
arms.

But he soon found himself in the impossible position of having to
serve two masters. On the one hand there was Russia, and the
orthodox Russians whose tsar he was, and on the other there were
the Poles, who had made him so at a price, and who now demanded
payment. Because he saw that this payment would be difficult and
fraught with peril to himself he would--after the common wont of
princes who have attained their objects--have repudiated the
debt. And so he was disposed to ignore, or at least to evade, the
persistent reminders that reached him from the Papal Nuncio, to
whom he had promised the introduction into Russia of the Roman
faith.

But presently came a letter from Sigismund couched in different
terms. The King of Poland wrote to Demetrius that word had
reached him that Boris Godunov was still alive, and that he had
taken refuge in England, adding that he might be tempted to
restore the fugitive to the throne of Muscovy.

The threat contained in that bitter piece of sarcasm aroused
Demetrius to a sense of the responsibilities he had undertaken,
which were precisely as Boris Godunov had surmised. As a
beginning he granted the Jesuits permission to build a church