within the sacred walls of the Kremlin, whereby he gave great
scandal. Soon followed other signs that he was not a true son of
the Orthodox Greek Church; he gave offence by his indifference to
public worship, by his neglect of Russian customs, and by
surrounding himself with Roman Catholic Poles, upon whom he
conferred high offices and dignities.

And there were those at hand ready to stir up public feeling
against him, resentful boyars quick to suspect that perhaps they
had been swindled. Foremost among these was the sinister turncoat
Shuiski, who had not derived from his perjury all the profit he
expected, who resented, above all, to see Basmanov--who had ever
been his rival--invested with a power second only to that of the
Tsar himself. Shuiski, skilled in intrigue, went to work in his
underground, burrowing fashion. He wrought upon the clergy, who
in their turn wrought upon the populace, and presently all was
seething disaffection under a surface apparently calm.

The eruption came in the following May, when Maryna, the daughter
of the Palatine of Sandomir, made her splendid entry into Moscow,
the bride-elect of the young Tsar. The dazzling procession and
the feasting that followed found little favour in the eyes of the
Muscovites, who now beheld their city aswarm with heretic Poles.

The marriage was magnificently solemnized on the 18th of May,
1606. And now Shuiski applied a match to the train he had so
skilfully laid. Demetrius had caused a timber fort to be built
before the walls of Moscow for a martial spectacle which he had
planned for the entertainment of his bride. Shuiski put it abroad
that the fort was intended to serve as an engine of destruction,