"Dear boy, always take heed to this counsel—'Judge nothing before the time.' Ere the end of life arrives, the purest virtue may be soiled by vice, and the bitterest calumny proved to be unfounded. My conduct is, in truth, an enigma, which I can not now solve—it is the secret of my life."
Seeing the young man still hesitate, he added:
"Keep an account of the money I give you, consider it as a loan; and when some day, through labor and study, you find yourself rich, pay the debt by educating a poor, deserving student. As to me, wait for my death, before you judge my life."
During fifty years Stanislas Staszic allowed malice to blacken his actions. He knew the time would come when all Poland would do him justice.
On the 20th of January, 1826, thirty thousand mourning Poles flocked around his bier, and sought to touch the pall, as though it were some holy, precious relic.
The Russian army could not comprehend the reason of the homage thus paid by the people of Warsaw to this illustrious man. His last testament fully explained the reason of his apparent avarice. His vast estates were divided into five hundred portions, each to become the property of a free peasant—his former serf. A school, on an admirable plan and very extended scale, was to be established for the instruction of the peasants' children in different trades. A reserved fund was provided for the succor of the sick and aged. A small yearly tax, to be paid by the liberated serfs, was destined for purchasing, by degrees, the freedom of their neighbors, condemned, as they had been, to hard and thankless toil.
After having thus provided for his peasants, Staszic bequeathed six hundred thousand florins for founding a model hospital; and he left a considerable sum toward educating poor and studious youths. As for his sister, she inherited only the same allowance which he had given her, yearly, during his life; for she was a person of careless, extravagant habits, who dissipated foolishly all the money she received.
A strange fate was that of Stanislas Staszic. A martyr to calumny during his life, after death his memory was blessed and revered by the multitudes whom he had made happy.