With wonderful fortitude the prince endured his humiliation and tortures.  The nobles who had accompanied him were plunged into inconsolable grief.  Michel endeavored to solace them.  He manifested, through the whole of this terrible trial, the spirit of the Christian, passing whole nights in prayer and in chanting the Psalms of David.  As his hands were bound, one of his pages held the sacred book before him.  His faithful followers urged him to take advantage of the confusion and tumult of the camp to effect his escape.  “Never,” exclaimed Michel, “will I degrade myself by flight.  Moreover, should I escape, that would save me only, not my country.  God’s will be done.”

The horde was now encamped among the mountains of Circassia.  It was the 22d of November, 1319, when, just after morning prayers, which were conducted by an abbe and two priests, who accompanied the Russian prince, Michel was informed that Usbeck had sentenced him to death.  He immediately called his young son Constantin, a lad twelve years of age, into his presence, and gave his last directions to his wife and children.

“Say to them,” enjoined this Christian prince, “that I go down into the tomb cherishing for them the most ardent affection.  I recommend to their care the generous nobles, the faithful servants who have manifested so much zeal for their sovereign, both when he was upon the throne and when in chains.”

These thoughts of home overwhelmed him, and, for a moment losing his fortitude, he burst into tears.  Causing the Bible to be opened to the Psalms of David, which, in all ages, have been the great fountain of consolation to the afflicted, he read from the fifty-sixth Psalm, fifth verse, “Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.”

“Prince,” said the abbe, “in the same Psalm with which you are so familiar, are the words, ’Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.  He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.’”

Michel simply replied by quoting again from the same inspired page:  “Oh that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away and be at rest.”

At that moment one of the pages entered the tent, pale and trembling, and informed that a great crowd of people were approaching.  “I know why they are coming,” said the prince, and he immediately sent his young son away on a message, that the child might not witness the cruel execution of his father.  Two brawny barbarians entered the tent.  As the prince was fervently praying, they smote him down with clubs, trampled him beneath their feet, and then plunged a poignard into his heart.  The crowd which had followed the executioners, according to their custom rushed into the royal tent for pillage.  The gory body was left in the hands of the Russian nobles.  They enveloped the remains in precious clothes, and bore them with affectionate care back to Moscow.