Sometimes they came to districts infested by robbers, and waited to join themselves to some larger party for protection. Sometimes they made long stretches of many hours in the saddle, when the inns were 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.
It was a simpler, less formal sort of school than we perhaps are accustomed to. The Fathers and the boys lived together, almost as one big family. They ate together in one large dining hall. There were always some of the Fathers with the boys in their games, as well as in their studies. It was a very pleasant place, and a very good place.
In those early days of Protestantism, Catholics, even Catholic boys, felt that they were in a fighting situation. The attacks upon the old faith woke new courage and devotion in those who remained faithful to the Church of the ages. And so, filled with that spirit of loyalty, that new earnestness which the times called forth, and living under the example of the simple manly piety of their Jesuit teachers, it is no wonder that the boys in the College of Vienna were an unusually good set of boys.
They had their regular classes, in languages, mathematics, and such science as the age knew. Latin was then the language of all educated people in Europe, the language of courts, the common meeting ground of all nations. Many a time, both in those days and later; a noble proved his rank and saved himself from mischance by the mere fact that he spoke Latin. It was not a dead language then, as it is now. It was in current use. Greek was comparatively new in Western schools. And though from their beginnings the Jesuits were famous teachers, we can hardly suppose that in their new and small college at Vienna the boys were much troubled by the speech of Plato and Demosthenes.
Of their games it is hard to know much at this late day. Sword-play and bouts of a soldierly sort were common enough. These boys were almost all of noble birth; most of them perhaps looked for-ward to the army for their profession. So they held mimic tournaments and played games in which they hurled lances through suspended rings; they shot with bows and arrows; and of course they had matches in running, jumping and wrestling.