ature, and an imagination
full of all the warmth and grace of his age and his country. It does not
appear that he ever put into words the musings which caught him
unawares--the relics of old dreams or soft recollections which now and
then would steal into his heart. But one night suddenly he rose from the
earthen floor which was his bed, and rushed out into the night in an
access of rage and passion and despair. A certain brother who was
praying in his cell, peering, wondering, through his little window, saw
him heap together seven masses of snow in the clear moonlight. 'Here is
thy wife,' he said to himself; 'these four are thy sons and daughters,
the other two are thy servant and thy handmaid; and for all these thou
art bound to provide. Make haste, then, and provide clothing for them,
lest they perish with cold. But if the care of so many trouble thee, be
thou careful to serve our Lord alone.' Bonaventura, who tells the story,
goes on, with the true spirit of a monkish historian, to state how, 'the
tempter being vanquished, departed, and the holy man returned victorious
to his cell.' The piteous human yearning that is underneath this wild
tale, the sudden access of self-pity and anger, mixed with a strange
attempt, not less piteous than the longing, at self-consolation--all the
struggle and conflict of emotion which stilled themselves, at least for
a moment, by that sudden plunge into the snow, and wild, violent, bodily
exertion, are either lost upon the teller of the tale, or perhaps he
fears to do his master injustice by revealing any consciousness of the
possibility of such thoughts. But it is a very remarkable peculiarity of
Francis's history, that whereas every saint in the Calendar, from Antony
downwards, is sometimes troubled with visions of voluptuous delight,
only Francis, in his pure dreams, is tempted by the modest joys of wife
and children--the most legitimate and tenderest love."[39]

The reader must not expect any historical exactitude or critical spirit
from our author. For his purpose a narrative was just as useful whether
true or false, but it probably never occurred to him to question the
exact truth of any statement that he found written in a book. The murder
of Seneca (p. 9) is certainly not the least of the many crimes which
stain the memory of Nero, but the circumstances of his death are not
exactly described by the mediaeval scribe. Whether the philosopher and
former tutor was implicated in the