Page:Kościuszko A Biography by Monika M Gardner.djvu/86

 embracing you a thousand times with the most tender affection for ever"—was one very dear to Kościuszko, begging him to relieve the necessities of some individual whose position in Warsaw without means had aroused the writer's pity.

"Watering my native soil with my tears,"—thus he writes to Felix Potocki, in an outburst of the patriotic indignation that even his enemies respected—"I am going to the New World, to my second country to which I have acquired a right by fighting for her independence. Once there, I shall beseech Providence for a stable, free, and good government in Poland, for the independence of our nation, for virtuous, enlightened, and free inhabitants therein."

He fell sick for sorrow at the thought of his nation's future. From his bed of convalescence in the famous Blue Palace of the Czartoryskis in Warsaw he wrote to Michał Zaleski, acquainting him with his intention to repair as soon as the fever left him to Galicia, thence:

"&hellip; possibly to Switzerland or England, whence I shall watch the course of events in our country. If they make for the happiness of the country, I shall return; if not, I shall move on further. I I shall enter no foreign service, and if I am forced to it by my poverty then I shall enter a service where there is a free state—but with an unchanging attachment to my country which I might serve no longer, as I saw nothing to convince me of the amelioration of the government or that gave any hope for the future happiness of our country in the measures at present taken"—meaning, of course, under the rule of the Confederation of Targowica. "I would not enter