hould be reinstated.

He wrote to this effect to Fouche, and privately told a Polish friend
that if the Emperor consented to these conditions he would fall at his
feet and swear to the gratitude of the whole nation.[1] The reply given
by Napoleon to Fouche was that he attached "no importance to Kosciuszko.
His conduct proves that he is only a fool."[2]

[Footnote 1: General Paszkowski, _History of Tadeusz Kosciuszko_.
Cracow, 1872 (Polish).]

[Footnote 2: Napoleon I, _Correspondance_. Paris, 1863.]

Active service for Poland was thus closed to Kosciuszko. Anxious to
leave a Napoleon-ridden France, he requested permission to retire to
Switzerland. It was refused, and he had nothing for it but to remain in
his French country retreat, under police supervision. He stayed there
for the five years that Napoleon's conquests shook the world, condemning
with his whole soul the spread of an empire on ruin and bloodshed,
occupying himself with his favourite hobbies of gardening and
handicrafts, working at his turning and making wooden clogs. The family
with whom he lived was as his own. His name was given to the three
children who were born since his residence under its roof: the only one
of them who survived infancy--Taddea Emilia--became the beloved child of
Kosciuszko's old age. The eldest son learnt from him love for Poland and
fought in the Polish Rising of 1830.

The story of the Russian campaign of 1812, with the passion of hope that
it evoked in the Polish nation and its extinction in the steppes of
Russia, need not be repeated here. In March, 1814, the allied armies and
the monarchs of Russia and Prussia entered Paris.

Alexander I, the youth who had visited Kosciuszko in prison, was now
Tsar of Russia. In the days when Alexander was a neglected heir at the
court of Catherine II young Adam Czartoryski was a hostage at the same
court, concealing his yearning for his country and loathing for his
surroundings under the icy reserve that was his only defence. One day
Alexander drew the young prince aside in the palace gardens, told him
that he had long observed him with sympathy and esteem, and that it was
his intention when he succeeded to the throne to restore Poland. This
was the beginning of that strange friendship which led to a Pole
directing the foreign policy of Russia in the years preceding the
Congress of Vienna, and ended in Alexander's betrayal of Czartoryski's
nation.

But in the spring of 1814 Alexander w