AFTERMATH

Stanislaus lacked six or eight weeks of being eighteen years old
when he died. He had not been a preacher or writer or engaged in any
public work. Only a handful of people in Rome so much as knew of
his existence. Yet no sooner was he dead than crowds flocked about
him as about a dead saint.

The General, Francis Borgia, ordered the body to be put into a
coffin, which was an unusual thing at that time, and to be buried at
the right hand of the high altar in the church.

Meantime the Lord John Kostka still raged in Poland. He had written
a most severe letter to Stanislaus shortly after Stanislaus arrived
in Rome: a letter full of threats and anger, to which Stanislaus had
replied kindly and affectionately, explaining to his father that he
had to follow God's call at any cost

But the Lord John was not to be so easily put off. He ordered his
eldest son, Paul, on to Rome, with power to bring back Stanislaus to
his home at Kostkov.

Paul traveled in some state and with no great haste. He reached
Rome in the middle of September, 1568, to find that God had been
beforehand with him, and that Stanislaus had indeed already gone
home, to heaven.

He had been greatly impressed at the time of Stanislaus' flight from
Vienna, by the incidents which seemed to show God's direct guidance
and protection in regard to his brother. Now, when the Fathers led