"What is it that you urge me to do, my lord?" said he. "Was it not to secure the happiness of my subjects that I labored? and finding my designs impracticable, what advantage would it be to them should I pertinaciously oppose their small numbers to the accumulated array of two empires, and of a king almost as powerful as either. What is my kingdom but the comfort of my people? What will it avail me to see them fall around me, man by man, and the few who remain bending in speechless sorrow over their graves? Such a sight would break my heart. Poland without its people would be a desert, and I a hermit rather than a king." In vain the palatine combated these arguments, showing the vain quiet such a peace might afford, by declaring it could only be temporary. In vain he told his majesty that he would purchase safety for the present race at the vast expense of not only the liberty of posterity, but of its probity and happiness. "However you disguise slavery," cried he, "it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind. They bend it from the loftiest virtue to a debasement beneath calculation. They disgrace honor; they trample upon justice. They transform the legions of Rome into a band of singers. They prostrate the sons of Athens and of Sparta at the feet of cowards. They make man abjure his birth right, bind himself to another's will, and give that into a tyrant's hands which he received as a deposit from Heaven--his reason, his conscience, and his soul. Think on this, and then, if you can, subjugate Poland to her enemies." Stanislaus, weakened by years and subdued by disappointment, now retained no higher wish than to save his subjects from immediate outrage. He did not answer the palatine, but with streaming eyes bent over the table, and annulled the glorious constitution of 1791. Then with emotions hardly short of agony, he signed an order presented by a plenipotentiary from the combined powers, which directed Prince Poniatowski to deliver the army under his command into the hands of General Brinicki. As the king put his signature to these papers, Sobieski, who had strenuously withstood each decision, started from his chair, bowed to his sovereign, and in silence left the apartment. Several noblemen followed him. These pacific measures did not meet with better treatment from without. When they were noised abroad, an alarming commotion arose among the inhabitants of Warsaw, and nearly four thousand men of the first families in the kingdom assembled themselves in the park of Villanow, and with tumultuous eagerness declared their resolution to resist the invaders of their country to their last gasp. The Prince Sapieha, Kosciusko, and Sobieski, with the sage Dombrowski, were the first who took this oath of fidelity to Poland; and they administered it to Thaddeus, who, kneeling down, inwardly invoked Heaven to aid him, as he swore to fulfil his trust.