far apart and they could get no food on the road. Sometimes they
tarried a day or two in a little town to rest their horses.

But everywhere Stanislaus thought of God, and prayed, and when
occasion offered spoke of holy things as only he could speak.
Bilinski and Paul often laughed at him, for they were of a different
stamp. But he did not mind their ridicule, and he bore them no
grudge for it. And so, after. many days, they came at length to
Vienna, on July 26, 1564.


CHAPTER V

SCHOOL DAYS

Vienna WAS a great city, even in those days, since for a long time
it had been the residence of the Roman Emperors of the West. It was
a Catholic city, though even in 1564, little more than forty years
after Luther's revolt, the Lutherans in the city had begun to be
quite numerous.

The Society of Jesus had been founded in 1540, only ten years before
Stanislaus was born. But it had spread quickly. For some years now
there had been a Jesuit house in Vienna. In i56o, four years before
Stanislaus came to Vienna, the Emperor Ferdinand I had loaned to the
Viennese Jesuits a large house next to their own, which they might
use as a college. The Fathers built a connection between the two
houses, so that they became practically one. Here they received
boys from the city, from the country round about, even from Hungary
and far Poland. Here Stanislaus took up his residence.