life, what is the modern world to me with its denial, its doubt,
its contemptible materialism, its destruction, its misery? Like winter,
it will flee away before the first footsteps of our spring.

It was S. Giovanni Gualberto who founded the Vallombrosan Order and
established here an abbey, whose daughter we now see. Born about the
year 1000, he was the son of Gualberto dei Visdomini, Signore of Petroio
in Val di Pesa, of the great family who lived in St. Peter's Gate in
Florence, and were, according to Villani, the patrons of the bishopric.
In those days murder daily walked the streets of every Tuscan city, and
so it came to pass that before Giovanni was eighteen years old his
brother Ugo had been murdered by one of that branch of his own house
which was at feud with Gualberto. Urged on by his father, who, we may be
sure, did not spare himself or his friends in seeking revenge, Giovanni
was ever on the watch for his enemy, his brother's murderer; and it
chanced that as he came into Florence on Good Friday morning in 1018,
just before he got to S. Miniato al Monte, at a turning of that steep
way he came upon him face to face suddenly in the sunlight. Surely God
had delivered him into his hands! Giovanni was on horseback with his
servant, and then the hill was in his favour; the other was alone.
Seeing he had no chance, for the steel was already cold on his jumping
throat, he sank on his knees, and, crossing his arms in the form of Holy
Cross, he prayed hard to the Lord Jesus to save his soul alive. Hearing
that blessed, beautiful name in the stillness of that morning, when all
the bells are silent and the very earth hushed for Christ's death,
Giovanni could not strike, but instead lifted up his enemy and embraced
him, saying, "I give you not your life only, but my love too for ever.
Pray for me that God may pardon my sin." So they went on their way; but
Giovanni, when he came to the monastery of S. Miniato of the
Benedictines, stole into the church and prayed before the great
Crucifix,[132] begging God to pardon him; and while he prayed thus, the
Christ miraculously bowed his head, "as it were to give him a token how
acceptable was this sacrifice of his resentment."

How little that sacrifice seems to us! But it was a great, an unheard-of
thing in those days. And for this cause, maybe, Giovanni proposed to
remain with the monks, to be received as a novice among them, and to
forsake the world for ever. And they receive