The generally accepted theory among Russian historians as to the true personality of this pretended Ivanovitch is that he was one Grigorie Otrepiev, an enterprising monk, who had thrown off his frock to live a life of liberty among the western Kozaks. Amid the vicissitudes of a self-seeking career, both before and after quitting the cloister, the idea of impersonating the dead Tzarevitch seems to have cropped up from time to time, and finally, having entered the service of a Lit’uanian boyarin, the adventurer, on the pretence of mortal sickness, announced to a priest his identity with Dimitri. The chief evidence in support of his story was the discovery of a jewelled cross on his person, a clue which might have convicted him of sacrilegious pilfering as convincingly as of royal parentage. His “discoverers,” however, needed little convincing; the King of Poland, to whom he was exhibited after a somewhat rapid recovery, welcomed him as a useful weapon of offence against Boris; the Jesuits saw in him an instrument for the advancement of their Church; and the banished and disgraced Russians with whom he came in contact hailed him as the possible means of restoring them to the state from which they had fallen. Kostomarov, in an exhaustive monograph on the subject, throws doubt on the identity of the false Dimitri with the somewhat nebulous monk Otrepiev, and inclines to the belief that the pretender, whoever he was, was himself convinced of his veritable tzarskie descent.[183] Whatever the origin and past career of this apparition, he succeeded in the first duty of an impostor, which is to impose. The personal resemblance which he bore to the family to which he claimed to belong does not appear to have been very striking; the medals and coins afterwards struck for him give his presentment as that of a coarse-featured thick-set man, with a heavy lower-jaw, recalling a Habsburg rather than a Rurikovitch type.[184] But with a widely scattered population like that of Russia, rumour, assertion, and hearsay information weighed more than actual facts; the bulk of the people may not have been convinced, but many of them were ready to give the Pretender the benefit of the doubt. Besides the unofficial but more or less open support which he received from the Poles, the restless or uneasy spirits on the Russian side of the border hastened to join his standard. The Don Kozaks, impatient of the control of Boris’s strong hand, sped gleefully to join a leader in whose ranks were already gathered numbers of their fellow-freebooters from the Dniepr. The Tzar displayed a calmness which perhaps he did not feel, and contented himself at first with an expostulatory message to the King of Poland, and an address, signed by the Patriarch and all the bishops, to their fellow-clergy in Lit’uania, counselling them to withhold their allegiance from the unfrocked monk who was masquerading as a Tzarevitch. While a cross-current of proclamations was being