One little escapade of Kosinski's came somehow to the knowledge of the French Comrades, and he suffered accordingly. Although careless and shaggy enough in appearance in all conscience, Kosinski happened to be fastidiously clean about his person. I doubt whether he was ever without a certain small manicure set in his pocket, and an old joke among his Russian friends was that he had failed to put in an appearance on some important occasion--the rescue of a Nihilist from prison, I believe--because he had forgotten his tooth-brush. This was of course a libel and gross exaggeration, but his extreme personal cleanliness was none the less a fact. Now when he first reached London he had scarcely left the station, besooted and begrimed after his long journey, when his eye was arrested by the appearance of a horse-trough. "Most opportune!" mused Kosinski, "how public-spirited and hygienic this London County Council really is!" and straightway divesting himself of his hat and collar and similar encumbrances, and spreading out on the rim of the trough his faithful manicure set and a few primitive toilette requisites secreted about his person, he commenced his ablutions, sublimely unconscious of the attention and surprise he was attracting. Before long, however, a riotously amused crowd collected round, and the Russian had finally to be removed under police escort, while attempting to explain to the indignant officer of the law that he had merely taken the horse-trough as a convenient form of public bath for encouraging cleanliness among the submerged tenth. With the departure of the _Ça-Ira_ the office resumed once more, during a brief interval, the even tenor of its ways. Kosinski who, in a spirit of self-preservation, had practically effaced himself during its sojourn, made himself once more apparent, bringing with him a peculiar Swede--a man argumentative to the verge of cantankerousness--who for hours and days together would argue on obscure questions of metaphysics. He had argued himself out of employment, out of his country, almost out of the society and the tolerance of his fellows. Life altogether was one long argument to this man, no act or word, however insignificant, could he be induced to pass over without discussing and dissecting, proving or disproving it. Free-love was his particular hobby, though this, too, he regarded from a metaphysical rather than a practical point of view. Like everything else in his life it was a matter for reason and argument, not for emotion; and he and Kosinski would frequently dispute the question warmly.