"Yes, I know that!" replied the young count, "and that you too had a share in the honor: for when I was yesterday presented to his majesty, amongst other things which he said, he told me that, under Heaven, he believed he owed his present existence to General Butzou and yourself."
"So very little to me," resumed the palatine, "that I will, to the best of my recollection, repeat every circumstance of the affair. Should I err, I must beg of you, general" (turning to the veteran), "to put me right."
Butzou, with a glow of honest exultation, nodded assent; and Thaddeus bowing in sign of attention, his smiling grandsire began.
"It was on a Sunday night, the 3d of September, in the year 1771, that this event took place. At that time, instigated by the courts of Vienna and Constantinople, a band of traitorous lords, confederated together, were covertly laying waste the country, and perpetrating all kinds of unsuspected outrage on their fellow-subjects who adhered to the king.
"Amongst their numerous crimes, a plan was laid for surprising and taking the royal person. Casimir Pulaski was the most daring of their leaders; and, assisted by Lukawski, Strawenski, and Kosinski, three Poles unworthy of their names, he resolved to accomplish his design or perish. Accordingly, these men, with forty other conspirators, in the presence of their commander swore with the most horrid oaths to deliver Stanislaus alive or dead into his hands.
"About a month after this meeting, these three parricides of their country, at the head of their coadjutors, disguised as peasants, and concealing their arms in wagons of hay, which they drove before them, entered the suburbs of Warsaw undetected.
"It was about ten o'clock P. M., on the 3d of September, as I have told you, they found an apt opportunity to execute their scheme. They placed themselves, under cover of the night, in those avenues, of the city through which they knew his majesty must pass in his way from Villanow, where he had been dining with me. His carriage was escorted by four of his own guards, besides myself and some of mine. We had scarcely lost sight of Villanow, when the conspirators rushed out and surrounded us, commanding the coachman to stop, and beating down the serving men with the butt ends of their muskets. Several shots were fired into the coach. One passed through my hat as I was getting out, sword in hand, the better to repel an attack the motive of which I could not then divine. A cut across my right leg with a sabre laid me under the wheels; and whilst in that situation, I heard the shot pouring into the coach like hail, and felt the villains stepping over my body to finish the murder of their sovereign.
"It was then that our friend Butzou (who at that period was a private soldier in my service) stood between his majesty and the rebels, parrying many a stroke aimed at the king; but at last, a thrust from a bayonet into his gallant defender's breast cast him weltering in his blood upon me. By this time all the persons who had formed the escort were either wounded or dispersed, and George Butzou, our friend's only brother, was slain. So dropped one by one the protectors of our trampled bodies and of our outraged monarch. Secure then of their prey, one of the assassins opened the carriage door, and with shocking imprecations seizing the king, discharged his pistol so near his majesty's face, that he felt the heat of the flash. A second villain cut him on the forehead with a sabre, whilst the third, who was on horseback, laying hold of the king's collar, dragged him along the ground through the suburbs of the city.
"During the latter part of this murderous scene, some of our affrighted people, who had fled, returned with a detachment, and seeing Butzou and me apparently lifeless, carried us to the royal palace, where all was commotion and distraction. But the foot-guards followed the track which the conspirators had taken. In one of the streets they found the king's hat dyed in blood, and his pelisse also. This confirmed their apprehensions of his death; and they came back filling all Warsaw with dismay.
"The assassins, meanwhile, got clear of the town. Finding, however, that the king, by loss of blood, was not likely to exist much longer by dragging him towards their employer, and that delay might even lose them his dead body, they mounted him, and redoubled their speed. When they came to the moat, they compelled him to leap his horse across it. In the attempt the horse fell and broke its leg. They then ordered his majesty, fainting as he was, to mount another and spur it over. The conspirators had no sooner passed the ditch, and saw their king fall insensible on the neck of his horse, than they tore from his breast the ribbon of the black eagle, and its diamond cross. Lukawski was so foolishly sure of his prisoner, dead or alive, that he quitted his charge, and repaired with these spoils to Pulaski, meaning to show them as proofs of his success. Many of the other plunderers, concluding that they could not do better than follow their leader's example, fled also, tired of their work, leaving only seven of the party, with Kosinski at their head, to remain over the unfortunate Stanislaus, who shortly after recovered from his swoon.