Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/45

girl to death by a discharge of arrows. When Prince Vasiley heard of the flight of Dimitry's owm son to the Tartars, he ordered the father to be placed in still closer confinement, and when the old man shortly after heard of the death of his son in Tartary, he died worn out with grief and imprisonment in that same year, 1519. All this was done through the agency of Vasiley Semetzitz, at whose instigation the prince had previously seized his relative, the lord of Corsira, and slain him in prison. But as it often occurs that they who lay snares for others fall into them themselves, so it happened to this Semetzitz. For he also was accused to the prince of the crime of rebellion, and was summoned on that charge to Moscow, but refused to go thither unless he first received letters of safe conduct, ratified by the oath of the prince and the metropolitan. Upon his receiving these, which were formally made out and sent to him, he went to Moscow on the 19th of April 1523, and was honourably received by the prince, who even offered him presents; but a few days after he was seized and thrown into prison, and was still kept in confinement [at the time that I was there]. They say that the reason of his being imprisoned was, that he had sent letters by the governor of Kiev to the king of Poland, expressing a wish to desert to him; and that the governor, when he became acquainted with his base intention towards his prince, resigned his charge of the letters, and sent them immediately to the prince of Moscow. Others, however, ascribe a more likely reason, viz., that as Semetzitz was the only one in all the empire of the prince of Muscovy who now remained in possession of fortified towns and principalities, the latter, in order the more easily to eject him, and for the greater safety of his own government, invented against him the charge of treason, as a means of removing him. In allusion to this, a certain jester went about carrying brooms in the streets at the time that Semetzitz went into Moscow, and on being asked what he meant by this,