and carried in Catherine's wheel chair into the Tsar's private room. The Tsar loaded him with gifts, including a carriage especially adapted to the recumbent position in which he was forced to travel. The Tsaritsa chose to give him a costly turning-lathe and a set of cameos, while he offered her a snuff-box of his own making, which she held in her hand during her coronation, showing it with pride to Rogerson as a gift which, said she, "puts me in mind of a highly instructive moral."[1] These presents from the Russian court were intensely galling to Kościuszko's feelings. He refused as many as he could. The rest that he accepted under compulsion he got rid of as soon as possible. His return present to the Tsaritsa was an act of courtesy, characteristic of Kościuszko's chivalry to women; but he received with a marked coldness the advances of the Tsar, showered upon him in the moment's caprice, as was the manner of Paul I.[2] On the 19th of December, 1796, he turned his back upon Russia for ever and, accompanied by Niemcewicz, departed for Sweden.
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