ght coffee in a cup that he recognized as
Kosciuszko's property. This alone told him that Kosciuszko was not far
off; and cheered by that thought he was able, says he, "to resign
himself to everything."[1]

[Footnote 1: J. Niemcewicz, _op. cit_.]

The narrative of Niemcewicz, to which we owe the story of each step of
the journey into Russia, can now, beyond a vague report that the poet
from time to time gleaned from his jailors, tell us next to nothing more
of Kosciuszko in a Russian prison. Detailed information from other
sources is wanting, and we have only a few certain facts to go upon. For
the first few months of his imprisonment, Kosciuszko was Kept in the
fortress as a rebel, not as a vanquished enemy. "Rebel" was the term by
which he was officially styled. Before December was out, he was
subjected to the usual ordeal of the Russian prison: the inquisition. A
paper was handed in to him, with a long string of questions, which he
was ordered to answer in his own handwriting, on the relations of the
Rising with foreign powers, the sources of its finances, and so on. It
also contained a close catechetical scrutiny upon the conversations he
had held with specified persons at such and such a date, and on the ins
and outs of different incidents during the insurrection, that was a
severe tax on the memory of a wounded man. All that is positively known
of the inquisition are the questions and Kosciuszko's replies. What lay
beneath it--what were the means of moral torture wielded by those who
conducted the inquiry, the pitfalls spread for a prisoner who lay
helpless, racked by pain from the wound in his head; what was the
ingenuity employed to wrest his answers from him, whether he willed or
no, are equally well known, says Kosciuszko's historian, Korzon, who had
himself more than sixty years later languished in a Russian dungeon, to
those acquainted with the methods of the Russian political prison. That
Kosciuszko, being at the mercy of the enemy who interrogated him, spoke
as openly as he did regarding the measures that he was prepared to take
with France and Turkey against Russia, is eloquent, says the same
historian, of the force of his character land of his conquest over
physical infirmity.[1] His answers are short and pithily clear. He
speaks the truth, says another Pole, or he does not speak at all.[1*]

[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

[Footnote 1*: _Op. cit_.]

His high qualities began to gain upon his