was a familiar visitor in the peasants'
cottages. Here he would sit among the homely folk, encouraging them to
tell him the tale of their troubles, pinching himself if only he could
succour their distress. He would explain to his domestic circle long and
unaccountable absences in wild wintry weather by the excuse that he had
been visiting friends. The friends were peasants, sick and burdened with
family cares, to whom the old man day after day carried through the snow
the money they required, as the stranger benefactor who would not allow
his name to be told.

Into this quiet routine broke the advent of distinguished men and women
of every nation, eager to pay their homage to a man whose life and
character had so deeply impressed Europe. An uncertain tradition has it
that Ludwika Lubomirska visited him, and that in his old age the two
former lovers talked together once more. Correspondence from known and
unknown friends poured in upon him. Among these was the Princess of
Carignano, the mother of Carlo Alberto, herself the daughter of a Polish
mother, Franciszka Krasinska, through whom the blood of Poland flows in
the veins of the present Royal House of Italy. Nor was England left out.
A book, now forgotten, but largely read in a past generation, in which
Kosciuszko's exploits figure, Jane Porter's Thaddeus of Warsaw, was sent
to Kosciuszko by its author. Jane Porter had heard her brother's
description of the Polish hero, to whom he had spoken when Kosciuszko
was in London. She had seen the Cosway portrait. In his letter of thanks
Kosciuszko told her jestingly that he was glad that all her eulogies of
him were "in a romance, because no one will believe them." Either from
him or from a friend of his she received a gold ring or, as some say, a
medal, with a representation of himself engraved upon it.

Through these last years Kosciuszko's heart ever clung fondly to his own
land and language. On the French letters he received his hand, as he
read, was wont to trace Polish proverbs, Polish turns of phrase. Tears
were seen to rise to his eyes as, gazing at the beautiful panorama from
a favourite spot of his in the Jura, a French friend recited Arnault's
elegy on the homeless and wandering leaf, torn from the parent oak, in
which the Pole read the story of his own exile. Education of the lower
classes, for which he had already made so strong a stand, continued to
be one of the matters in which he most keenly interested himself