It was on the 12th of March, 1801, when I was half-way between Moscow and St. Petersburg, that I heard the news of Paul's death. I found in front of the posthouse a number of couriers, who were about to spread the news in the different towns of the empire, and, since they took all the horses, I could obtain none for myself. I was obliged to remain in my carriage, which had been put by the roadside on the bank of a river; such a bitter wind was blowing that it froze me. Nevertheless, I was compelled to pass the night there. At last I contrived to hire some horses, and I reached St. Petersburg only at eight or nine on the morning of the following day. I found that city in a delirium of joy; people were singing and dancing and kissing one another in the streets; acquaintances of mine ran up to my carriage and squeezed my hands, exclaiming "What a blessing!" They told me that the houses had been illuminated the evening before. In short, the death of the unhappy Prince gave rise to general rejoicings. None of the particulars of the dreadful occurrence were secret from anybody, and I can aver that the accounts given me that day all agreed. Palhen, one of the conspirators, had taken every means to frighten Paul with a plot he alleged to have been hatched by the Empress and her children for the purpose of seizing the throne. Paul's habitually suspicious mind incited him only too strongly to credit these false confidences, which enraged him to the degree of ordering his wife and the Grand Dukes to be shut up in the fortress. Palhen declined to obey without the Emperor's signed authority. Paul gave his signature, and Palhen at once went to Alexander with the document. "You see," he said, "that your father is mad, and that you are all lost unless we forestall him by locking him up first." Alexander, though believing his life and his family's in jeopardy, did nothing but consent through silence to this idea, which seemed merely to propose putting a lunatic out of harm's way. But Palhen and his accomplices thought it necessary to go further. Five of the conspirators undertook the assassination, one of them being Plato Zuboff, a former pet of Catherine, whom Paul had loaded with favours after recalling him from exile. The five penetrated into Paul's sleeping apartment after he had gone to bed. The two guards at the door defended it valiantly, but their resistance was fruitless, and one of them was killed. At the sight of the infuriated men rushing in upon him, Paul rose from his couch. As he was very powerful he made a long fight against his murderers, who finally managed to strangle him in an armchair. The unhappy man's last words were, "You, too, Zuboff! I thought you were my friend!"