“Sign!” said Benningsen, menacing the Czar with his sabre. Paul defied them. As often as they repeated their demand so often did he refuse. At last he seemed to yield. “Give me the paper.” The document was handed to him. He rent it to fragments and tossed them at their feet. The smile of triumph accompanying the act provoked Benningsen to fury; in a moment of forgetfulness he smote Paul upon the face. Too late he realised what he had done. “I have struck the Czar! We are all lost—_if he does not die_!” The conspirators shuddered; there was now no retreat. Flinging himself upon the Czar, Benningsen brought him to the floor. Emboldened by his example the others crowded around. There was a flash of steel. “Hold!” cried Benningsen. “No bloodshed. No disfiguring mark on the body. A sash, some one!” Paul, not realising till that moment that resistance might end in death, suddenly lost courage. His words were no longer threatening, but supplicatory. “Spare—me—I will—abdicate—!” He could get out the words in gasps only. Benningsen’s great hand was pressing upon his windpipe. “Too late! Will no one lend a hand?” said Benningsen, for the Czar was making desperate efforts to fling his adversary off. “Must I do the work alone?” Several knelt and pinned the struggling Paul to the floor. Benningsen rose, and directed their movements. A sash was slipped loosely round the Czar’s throat, but in his deadly agony he succeeded in getting his left hand through the noose, and drew it across his chin. “Give me time—for God’s sake—a minute only—to say a prayer!” His misty glance, wandering around in search of pity, suddenly fell upon Prince Ouvaroff, who, with a troubled look on his face, had come forward, bent, even at the cost of his life, on making an attempt to stay the deed. “Ouvaroff—_my own son!_—among these men!—will you see your father—murdered?” The Prince, his mind absolutely frozen with horror at this sudden and unlooked for revelation—a revelation that he felt to be true—stared with ghastly look at the Czar. The assassins, in the surprise of the moment, stopped in their work. Then the Prince, with a wild laugh like that of a man who has suddenly become insane, swayed feebly forward and fell senseless. “I didn’t know we had a woman among us,” laughed Benningsen. “Good Lord!” he continued, apostrophising the struggling Czar, “did ever man yell so?” He set the sole of his great boot upon the mouth of the victim; the heel slipped between the jaws of the Czar, who bit with such fury that the teeth penetrated the leather and entered the flesh. With a snarl of pain Benningsen withdrew his foot. Till his dying day he carried on his heel the mark left by the Czar. They got the noose around his neck at last, and two men, one on each side, tugged at the loose ends. The work was hard and long; fully ten minutes passed before they rose from their knees.