appeared again incarnate in his own person as Christ and Tsar.[1]
The history of Russia is full of similar impostures, which have always found ready acceptance among a people credulous and excitable, greedy for the marvellous, and ever wildly dreaming, in their degradation and misery, of a deliverer to come.
Selivanov doubtless thought to strengthen his spiritual pretensions by claiming to be the true "White Tsar," and his disciples, in their worship, addressed him as "King of Kings and Lord of Lords" (Rev. xix., 16).
According to the Skoptsi, Paul was curious to see the man who pretended to be his father, and recalled him from Siberia for that purpose, but his return was not triumphant; he was confined as a lunatic in an insane asylum, and recovered his liberty only under Alexander I., at the intercession of a Polish noble, Elinski, who, with a few others in high position, was, in secret, a convert to his creed.
For eighteen years longer, favored by the singular moral state of Russian society at that period, and protected by the influence of wealthy partisans, he lived at St. Petersburg, sedulously laboring to spread his doctrines, and worshipped by his patrons as God and Tsar. Finally, in 1820, he was confined in the monastery of Souzdal, where, imbecile from old age, he died in 1832.
The Skoptsi do not admit his death, but declare that he still lives in the depths of Siberia, whence he will come, at the appointed time, to establish the kingdom of righteousness. Some of them believe that Napoleon will marshal the angelic hosts who will surround their leader and will share his triumph. Napoleon's fame has left
- ↑ Haxthausen, vol. i., p. 249.
