the superstitious Muscovite soldiery that Kosciuszko had,
notwithstanding, come up to the sentries, and when fired upon had
changed himself into the form of a cat. Such tales apart, on December
5th he was given notice by the Austrian authorities to quit the country
within twelve hours.

"I am grieved to leave beloved Poland, my friends and so many hearts
that were good to me," sadly writes Kosciuszko. Spies and secret agents
were watching the posts; so he and his fellow-Poles protected themselves
and their correspondence by various precautions, fictitious names,
confidential messengers. "Bieda"--misfortune--was the pseudonym by which
Kosciuszko, his heart heavy with foreboding for his country and grief at
her loss, signed himself, and wished to be known, as he set out for a
foreign land. Cracow lay in the route that as a fugitive from the
Austrian Government he was obliged to choose. He tarried a few days in
the beautiful old city that is the sepulchre of Poland's kings, and
where he was after death to lie in the last resting-place of those whom
his nation most honours. Thence he journeyed to Leipzig.

In Leipzig were the men of the nation whose minds and aims were in the
closest sympathy with his. Kollontaj, Ignacy and Stanislas Potocki, and
the band of Poles who had been responsible for the drawing up of the
Constitution of the 3rd of May, had gathered together in the Saxon city
out of reach of Russian vengeance, where they could best concert
measures for saving Poland. In January 1793 the news reached them that
Prussia, whose attitude in regard to scraps of paper is no recent
development, had helped herself to that portion of Great Poland which
had escaped her at the first partition, and to Thorn and Danzig, which
she had so long coveted, while Russia took the southern provinces of
Poland and part of Lithuania.

But the camp of Polish patriots in Leipzig would not give Poland up for
lost. "She will not remain without assistance and means to save her,"
wrote Kollontaj. "Let them do what they will; they will not bring about
her destruction." "Kosciuszko is now in Paris"--this was early in 1793.
"He is going to England and Sweden." As a matter of fact he went to
neither at that time. "That upright man is very useful to his
country."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Letters of Hugo Kollontaj_.]

It was to France, which had won Kosciuszko's heart in his youth, and
whose help he had seen given to America in the latter's struggle fo