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