One of the manors that he frequented was that of Michał Zaleski, a legal and political functionary of some importance in Lithuania. With him and his wife Kościuszko contracted a lasting friendship. [Footnote 1: _op. cit_.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid_.] "I will begin"--so runs a letter of his to Mme. Zaleska--"first of all by reproaching your ladyship for not having added even one word to the letter"--presumably her husband's. "A fine way of remembering your neighbour! So I have only got to hurry home to be forgotten by my friends! I will forbid any more of my water to be given to you, and will entirely prohibit my well; so you will have to drink from your own, made badly by your husband. I lay my curse on your ladyship and will show you no mercy; and if I should be in the church on Good Friday you would most certainly be denied absolution for your great and heinous sins. However, I kiss your hands, and be both of you convinced of the enduring respect and esteem with which I desire to be your humblest servant."[1] "Oh, would that I could obtain such a wife!" he writes to the husband. "She is an example for thousands--how to find happiness at home with husband and children. What month were you born in? If my birthday were in the same month, then I too might venture to marry."[2] [Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kościuszko_.] [Footnote 2: _Letters of Kościuszko_.] Although Kościuszko lived far from the turmoil of publicity and out of the reach of events, his thoughts, as we know from his letters and from rough notes that exist in his handwriting, were much taken up with the crisis through which his country was passing. He pondered much upon the means of her preservation. His correspondence with Michał Zaleski insists upon the necessity for Poland of national self-consciousness and confidence in her own destiny. Education for the masses, a citizen army of burghers and peasants, were two of the reforms for which Kościuszko most earnestly longed, and in which, in advance of his epoch, he saw a remedy for crying evils. It was a moment when the attention of thoughtful men was riveted on great national problems, for the famous Diet was now sitting that from 1788 to 1791 was engaged in the task of framing for Poland the enlightened Constitution that, were it not for the armies of Prussia and Russia, would have saved her. One of its early enactments was the remodelling of the Polish army. Kościuszko's standing was now for the first time to be publicly recognized by the Government of his country, and his talent impressed into her service. His old love, the Princess Lubomirska, here reappears in his history, writing a letter to the King, with the request that Kościuszko should be given a military command. If to the modern reader it comes with something of a shock, as Korzon remarks, that a woman considered her intervention needed to push the claims of a soldier who had so greatly distinguished himself, we