and to deal with the evil-doers as seemed best to him. Ivan graciously relented and made a solemn entry into the city on the 2nd February. If the chronicles are to be credited, the change of air and scene had done him little good as far as bodily health was concerned, and the people were appalled to behold the ravages which two months’ absence had wrought on the person of their sovereign, who now appeared before them “a gaunt, bent man, with dull eyes, matted, unkempt hair, and a gloomy fierceness stamped upon every feature.”[153] Certainly this Tzar gave his subjects plenty of excitement. As a conqueror he had retaken possession of Moskva, and a new batch of regulations marked his return to the head of affairs; most notable of these enactments was the institution of a personal body-guard, chosen from the ranks of the courtier boyarins, and originally fixed at 1000 strong (afterwards raised to 6000), to whom was given the name of Opritchnina, or select legion. These satellites and creatures of the Tzar fulfilled the duties of guards, police, and special messengers, and became the agents for such cruelties and extortions as Ivan could not superintend in person. They carried at their saddle-bow a broom and a dog’s head, to signify that they swept treason out of the land and devoured the Tzar’s enemies; the terror they inspired among the unfortunate people upon whom they were let loose earned for them the name of “Kromieshniki,” “of the outer darkness,” or literally “outers.” Another new departure was the commencement of a palace outside the walls of the Kreml; an unaccountable whim, unless Ivan feared to be shut up like a rat in a trap among a people whose patience might one day give out, and who might hunt for a Vasilievitch as on a memorable occasion they had hunted for Glinskies. For the present the Moskvitchi were huddled like sheep in the corner of a pen, watching with nervous interest the movements of the personage who might be said to embrace the double part of shepherd and wolf. No time was lost in getting to business; in the month of February a batch of victims was selected to inaugurate the new days of personal rule--a dark festival, in sombre, gloomy, and terrible setting, and not as yet common enough to have lost the thrill of expectancy. A list of names stalk spectre-wise across this ugly page of Moskva’s history, as the bearers of them walked to their doom under the gaze of a blood-frozen multitude. Aleksandr Gorbati, who at least had fought for the Tzar “from Kazan to the field of Arske,” and his son Petr, who at the age of seventeen could not have been steeped very deeply in treason, died together under the executioner’s axe. Four other enemies of the Tzar’s repose suffered by the block; for a fifth was reserved a more ghastly punishment. Kniaz Dimitri Shaferov expiated his real or imputed crimes by a slow death by impalement. All day long, it was said, he lingered, bearing his pain heroically; and