"
"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.
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