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Updated: June 27, 2025
Bilinski said: "You will soon be well. The doctors will cure you. Don't think of death or go frightening yourself." "I am not afraid," said Stanislaus. "But I know I am dying. Do not let me die without Holy Communion." But Bilinski still put him off, and tried to tease him jokingly with charges of cowardice.
And this went on for two years. He could have stopped the whole matter with no trouble at all, by simply writing to his father. But he never so much as hinted to any one at home of the way Paul and Bilinski and his cousins treated him. He was as plucky as he was gentle and forgiving.
Before I left I received a friendly letter from Prince Lubomirski, with a bill for a hundred ducats, in payment of fifty copies of my book. The prince had become lord high marshal on the death of Count Bilinski. When I got to Turin I found a letter from the noble Venetian M. Girolamo Zulian, the same that had given me an introduction to Mocenigo.
For instance, he had been used to give his rich clothes away to the poor, and dress very simply. Bilinski and Paul insisted on his dressing as became his rank, and he yielded readily. Bilinski wanted him to take dancing lessons, and he took them, and learned to dance very well. He was not keen about any of these things, because he reckoned they would not count for much in eternity.
At once Bilinski set out with the two to get a house. In the Platz Kiemark, a fashionable quarter of the town, there was a splendid mansion, belonging to a Lutheran noble, the Senator Kimberker. It took Paul's fancy immensely.
But Stanislaus knew well enough what were the limits of Bilinski's authority and he was not at all the sort of boy to be easily bullied by a mere assumption of authority that did not exist. The result always was that Stanislaus continued to do what his own conscience urged him to do, and that Bilinski and Paul felt helpless in the face of his quiet, fearless persistence.
It was very simple and straightforward, a genuine boy's letter. He had run away, he said, because he had to. He was called to enter the Society of Jesus. He had to do what God wanted of him. He knew they would prevent him if they could. And so he just went. He left them messages of affectionate regard, and begged them to forward his letter to his father. Bilinski sent this letter on at once.
He died November 13, 1607: the very day of the month afterwards fixed as the feast of Saint Stanislaus. Bilinski, too, the tutor of Stanislaus, showed in after life the fruit of Stanislaus' prayers. He became Canon of Pultowa and Plock and lived holily.
When he had done his duty in study, the books had no further claim upon him, and no attraction in themselves. And yet he kept up his wonderful brightness and cheeriness all the time; so that Bilinski often wondered at him.
Then, worn out though he was by his long sickness, Stanislaus raised himself, knelt on the bed, and struck his breast as he three times repeated: "Lord, I am not worthy!" Then he raised his face, and opening his lips received his sacramental Lord. Bilinski looked on with awe and almost terror, unable to say a word.
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