waiting for him, concealing a pistol in his Alentejo cloak. When the President passed the assassin on the first floor of Rossio station, Da Costa penetrated the double police cordon that surrounded the President and fired two shots from the pistol hidden under his cloak. The first shot hit Pais in the right arm, where the bullet became lodged. The second shot hit the President in the stomach, causing a wound which would prove fatal. Pais immediately fell to the ground, and a panic broke out. During the confusion, four innocent bystanders were fatally wounded by the guards; the assassin, who didn't try to escape, was arrested after being brutally beaten by the crowd. Pais was still alive at this point and was rushed toward St. Joseph Hospital, but he died of his wounds en route to the hospital shortly before midnight. Sidónio Pais's funeral was attended by tens of thousands of people, but multiple interruptions, some of them violent, took place as protesters mingled among the crowd. On 16 December, João do Canto e Castro was chosen as his successor by the Congress of the Republic rather than through a new plebiscite. Legacy The murder of Sidónio Pais heralded a traumatic time for the First Republic. Essentially a populist, charismatic leader, Pais portrayed himself as the last hope of a doomed country, and was widely perceived as such. This explains why his assassination had such a huge, and long-lasting influence on Portuguese politics. From then on, most political stability disappeared, leading to a permanent crisis that only ended nearly eight years later when the 28 May 1926 coup d'état set up the ensuing forty years of dictatorship. Douglas Wheeler tries to explain Pais' attractiveness as a leader (and later, a cult figure) by pointing to his character: The writer Fernando Pessoa admiringly referred to Pais as the "President-King" (Presidente-Rei), a description that stuck in later years because it adequately symbolized his regime. Particularly among the most conservative Catholic groups, Pais entered the Portuguese imagination as a mix of a savior and a martyr, and caused the emergence of a popular cult, similar to the one existing around the figure of José Tomás de Sousa Martins, which endures until today. It is common to see fresh flowers and religious symbols being laid at his tomb. This is mainly due to his reversal of some early republican anti-clerical laws. But it