THE PURSUIT
Meanwhile, there was a hubbub in Vienna. Stanislaus had lived in
that city about three years with his brother Paul, who was about a
year older than he, and in the care of a tutor, a young man named
Bilinski. He had left them in the early morning. As the day wore on
and he did not return home, they became uneasy. They went about all
afternoon, inquiring amongst their friends and acquaintance if any
had seen him. Only one or two were in the secret, and they kept
discreet silence.
Unable therefore to get any trace of Stanislaus, they soon came to
the conclusion that he had fled. And, as we shall see, they had
good reason in their own hearts for guessing that from the first.
They returned to the house of the Senator Kimberker, where they were
all lodging, and taking Kimberker, who was a Lutheran, into their
confidence, they held a council of war.
It was decided that Stanislaus must have gone to Augsburg. Paul
recalled something that Stanislaus had said to him only the day
before, when he had threatened plainly to run away. And they had
heard him say, another time, that at Augsburg was Peter Canisius,
the Provincial of the German Jesuits. Of course they were going to
follow him and bring him back. But night had come on before their
inquiries and deliberations were finished. They must wait till the
next day.
Accordingly, bright and early the following morning, all three, with
one of the Kostkas' servants, drove out in a carriage over the
Augsburg road. They had four good horses and they told their
coachman not to spare the whip. They came to the inn where
Stanislaus had spent the night. They questioned the landlord.
"Have you seen a boy of seventeen, a Polish noble, pass westward
along this road yesterday or today?"
But the landlord was shrewd, and though the whole matter was beyond
him, he fancied somehow that these eager folk were no great friends
of the boy who had lodged with him. And as he trusted that boy and
could scarcely help being loyal to him, he shrugged his shoulders
and answered:
"How should I know? So many travel this road."
Then Bilinski described Stanislaus and his doublet of velvet and
hose of silk and jeweled dagger. But at that the landlord shook his
head in denial.
"I have seen no such person as your graces describe," he said.
Bilinski called out to the coachman:
"Drive on. We have nothing to learn here."
But Paul said: "NQ let us turn back. He cannot have walked this far
in one day. We must have passed him on the road."
"Perhaps you could not have walked so far," said Bilinski, with a
sneer. "But Stanislaus could. Drive on!"
Forty miles or more out of Vienna, they saw a boy trudging ahead of
them, in a rough tunic, rope-girdled, with a staff in his hand. At
the noise of the hurrying wheels the boy glanced back, then quickly
turned up a lane which there entered the road. He did not look in
the least like a nobleman's son, and the carriage passed the bottom
of the lane without so much as slacking speed.
Stanislaus ran up the lane until he came to where it ended at a
rough, brawling stream. Without a moment's hesitation he put off his
shoes, tucked up his tunic, and began wading in the course of the
stream. The water was cold, the sharp stones in the bed of the
stream bruised his feet, at any moment he might fall into a deep
hole and be drowned. But he splashed and stumbled ahead, as fast as
he could go, praying to his guardian angel to have care of him. A
little farther, he knew, the highway crossed this stream by a
bridge, and there he could leave the water and regain the road.
The carriage meantime kept on and came to this bridge. But Paul had
been thinking of the young fellow who took to the lane when he saw
the carriage approach and a shrewd suspicion came into his head.
"Did you see that boy who ran up the lane?" he cried at length to
Bilinski. "I believe it was Stanislaus."
"But he was dressed like a peasant," said Bilinski. "And Stanislaus
had on a handsome suit."
They debated for a time, but Paul prevailed. Round they turned and
drove furiously back to the lane. But as the driver tried to turn
his horses into it, the animals reared and balked and refused to
enter. Blows and curses were showered on them; they merely stood and
trembled; no efforts could urge them into the lane. Then the driver
grew afraid, and cried out:
"My Lord Paul, we cannot go into this lane. And before God, I have
fear upon me! Never have the horses acted this way."
And indeed fear seized them all. They saw the hand of God in this
strange obstinancy of their beasts. Even Kimberker cried the pursuit.
"Fear God!" he said. "For this is no common mishap!"
And when they turned the horses' heads again toward Vienna, the
animals snorted and pranced and went very willingly.
And so, when Stanislaus came to the bridge, the highway was clear.
After a look about, he put on his shoes, gripped his staff afresh,
and took up again cheerily as ever his thirty miles a day to
Augsburg.
Day after day, tired and footsore, he told off the long miles,
begging his food and lodging as he went; fearless and happy, praying
like an angel of God as he walked along.
Many were kind to him for the brave, bright spirit that shone out in
his face. Many remembered those words of our Lord, "Whatsoever you
have done unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto
me," and willingly sheltered the boy and gave him to eat. Sometimes
he turned into the fields beside the road and slept through the warm
August night beneath the open sky. Whenever he came to a church in
the morning, he heard Mass and received Holy Communion, for he
started out each morning fasting. And on the fourteenth day he
reached Augsburg.
What happened there, we shall see in another chapter, and how within
three weeks this smiling boy turned his face southward and tramped
another eight hundred miles on foot to Rome. But just that will
show you something of the spirit of Stanislaus, the spirit of a
hero. All that a knight might do out of love for his lady, he did
out of love for God. He really loved God with a sort of fierce
intensity. And he wanted to show his love in deeds, just as we want
to show our love for a person by doing something, by giving
something. God had given him everything, he would give God
everything: that was the whole of his life. And with that generosity
went a fine common sense. He was not rash or headlong, acting first
and thinking afterward. He reckoned things out calmly and sensibly,
and then went ahead with a pluck and determination that nothing in
the world could stop.
God asked a fearfully hard thing of him; to leave his people, his
home; to set out afoot on an enormous journey; to undergo no end of
hardships and humiliations; to live in a strange land, among strange
people. And he did it, did it smilingly, joyfully, with a simple,
quiet bravery seldom if ever matched by any other boy in the world.
The one thing that staggers us is his reason for doing it, his great
love for God. And that is because we have not got, what we could
easily get, his secret. He prayed, he kept close in thought to God
always. God and heaven and our Lady were as familiar to his mind as
the sun and the earth and the air are to our mind's. The earth to
him was only the antechamber of heaven. He looked upon life as one
looks upon a little delay at a railway station before the train
leaves; the only important thing is to catch the train.