In those days all travel was on foot or on horseback. The wealthy
and noble rode, the poor footed it. Great highways cut Europe from
end to end; though there were tracts in Stanislaus' country where
the roadway was only the broad steppe, where the grasses waved and
tossed like the sea, where men were few and their dwellings
scattered far apart.

They crossed great rivers, they climbed the foothills of the
Carpathian mountains. Many a night Paul and Stanislaus, with their
people, slept under the stars. Many a wild, rough border town they
passed. Many a great forest they penetrated, the home of the wild
boar and the aurochs.

And the tar burners in the forests looked up from under their matted
brows at the fair oval face of the Polish boy, and said:

"He is like a wild flower blown by the wind. He is like the violets
that laugh in spring at the sun."

And the shaggy fighting-men of the frontier villages watched him
ride through their streets, and thought:

"This is an angel. He looks toward heaven because he sees his
Brothers there."

They crossed themselves piously as he passed. And some of the light
and laughter of his face glowed 'for a moment in their dark lives,
as a gloomy glen in the forest is brightened up by a darting ray of
sunlight.