"... most mild because he is your husband and the father of my little Tekla; but I now see no chance after such a letter [the father's], at the very memory of which my blood boils. But I thank you for your kindness to me, which will be held in my undying remembrance. Your character, your rare attachment to your daughter, will be an example to all. ... May you live long and happily, and you will find your reward when you wish to take it. My God! what a horrible idea that I should have done violence to a law of nature, and in spite of the father have carried off from his house my beloved! And thou, the life of my heart, who wert to have been the sweetness of all my life, little Tekla, forgive me for not finding fitting words at this moment, but, weeping, I bow my head to kiss thy little feet with affection that shall endure for ever. Do not exalt me in thy thoughts, but tread down all the proofs of my friendship and drown in thy memory my love for thee."[1]
"I will always be with you both"—this to Tekla's mother, bidding her good-bye in language of unshaken affection: "although not present, yet in heart and thought."[2]
[1] Ibid.
[2] Ibid.
Korzon notices that at the moment of Kościuszko's rebuff at the hands of his Tekla's father, who was after all nobody more than an ordinary landowner, the rejected suitor had several thousand soldiers under his command, and in days when wild and lawless acts were not unknown, and not difficult of execution in a country where conditions were unsettled and communications long, it would have been easy enough for him to have carried his way by sheer force. But outrage and violence against another's rights, defiance of law and honour, were foreign to Kościuszko's whole trend of character. Here, then, love passes out of Kościuszko's life, whose only passion henceforth will be that of devotion to his country. Five years later Tekla married Kniaziewicz, the friend of Kościuszko who, with him, was to be sung in the most famous of Poland's poems, the Pan Tadeusz of Adam Mickiewicz.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND
In 1791, amidst an outburst of national rejoicing, was passed the Polish Constitution of the 3rd of May. Polish music and song have commemorated the day—to this hour the Polish nation dedicates each recurrent anniversary to its memory—when Poland triumphantly burst the shackles that were sapping her life and stood forth in the van of European states with a legislation that evoked the admiration of Burke, Walpole, and the foremost thinkers of the age. The old abuses were swept away. A constitutional and hereditary monarchy was established. Burghers were granted equal civic rights with the nobility, the condition of the peasants was ameliorated. Freedom was proclaimed to all who set foot upon the soil of Poland.