"I like the story of Ivan the Terrible putting his jolly old alpenstock
through the fellow's foot on the stairs when he came with the letter,"
Jack said. "Sensible sort of thing to do. Kept the messenger in place."

Meanwhile Tamara was conversing in a lower voice with Stephen Strong.

"The more you stay in this country, the more it fascinates you," he
said. "And you feel you have got back to some of the fierce primitive
passions of nature. Here, in Moscow, the whole earth must be stained
with wild orgies and blood, and yet they are full of poetry and
romance. Even Ivan the Terrible had his religious side, and every
creature of them believes in the saints and the priests. It is said the
impostor who posed as Ivan's son might have succeeded had he not been
too kind, he showed clemency to Shuisky and his enemies and did not
have them torn to pieces, so the people would not believe he could be
the Terrible's son! And they chased him to that window you remember we
saw in the old palace of the Kremlin and there he had to throw himself
out."

"It makes one wonder what can arise from a history of such horrible
crimes," Tamara said.

"You must not forget that the country is practically three hundred
years behind the times, though," Stephen Strong went on. "No doubt
quite as great horrors marked others if we look at them at an
equivalent stage of development. It is missing this point which makes
most strangers, and many foreign historians, so unjust to Russia and
her people. The national qualities are immeasurably great, but as a
civilized nation they are so very young."