"You played on us long enough; now play for us," cried the ribald insulter.
Others lashed the corpse with their whips, crying, "Look at the czar, the hero of the Germans."
For three days Dmitri's body lay exposed to the view of the populace, but it was so hacked and mangled that none could recognize in it the gallant young man who a few days before had worn the imperial robes and crown.
On the third night a blue flame was seen playing over the table, and the guards, frightened by this natural result of putrefaction, hastened to bury the body outside the walls. But superstitious terrors followed the prodigy: it was whispered that Dmitri was a wizard who, by magic arts, had the power to come to life from the grave. To prevent this the body was dug up again and burned, and the ashes were collected, mixed with gunpowder, and rammed into a cannon, which was then dragged to the gate by which Dmitri had entered Moscow. Here the match was applied, and the ashes of the late czar were hurled down the road leading to Poland, whence he had come.
Thus died a man who, impostor though he seems to have been, was perhaps the noblest and best of all the Russian czars, while the story of his rise and fall forms the most dramatic tale in all the annals of the empire over which for one short year he ruled.
THE ERA OF THE IMPOSTORS.
We have told how the ashes of Dmitri were loaded into a cannon and fired from the gate of Moscow. They fell like seeds of war on the soil of Russia, and for years that unhappy land was torn by faction and harried by invasion. From those ashes new Dmitris seemed to spring, other impostors rose to claim the crown, and until all these shades were laid peace fled from the land.
Vassili Shuiski, the leader in the insurrection against Dmitri, had himself proclaimed czar. He was destined to learn the truth of the saying, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." For hardly had the mob that murdered Dmitri dispersed before rumors arose that their victim was not dead. His body had been so mangled that none could recognize it, and the story was set afloat that it was one of his officers who had been killed, and that he had escaped. Four swift horses were missing from the stables of the palace, and these were at once connected with the assumed flight of the czar. Rumor was in the air, and even in Moscow doubts of Dmitri's death grew rife.