tura, where they prayed and worked. Below
the Chapel of the Stigmata is the Sasso Spicco, whence the devil hurled
one of the brethren. For during that Lent, "Francis leaving his cell one
day in fervour of spirit, and going aside a little to pray in a hollow
of the rock, from which down to the ground is an exceeding deep descent
and a horrible and fearful precipice, suddenly the devil came in
terrible shape, with a tempest and exceeding loud roar, and struck at
him for to push him down thence. St. Francis, not having where to flee,
and not being able to endure the grim aspect of the demon, he turned him
quickly with hands and face and all his body pressed to the rock,
commending himself to God and groping with his hands, if perchance he
might find aught to cling to. But as it pleased God, who suffereth not
His servants to be tempted above that they are able to bear, suddenly by
a miracle the rock to which he clung hollowed itself out in fashion as
the shape of his body.... But that which the demon could not do then
unto St. Francis ... he did a good while after the death of St. Francis
unto one of his dear and pious brothers, who was setting in order some
pieces of wood in the self-same place, to the end that it might be
possible to cross there without peril, out of devotion to St. Francis
and the miracle that was wrought there. On a day the demon pushed him,
while he had on his head a great log that he wished to set there, and
made him fall down thence with the log upon his head. But God, that had
preserved and delivered St. Francis from falling, through his merits
delivered and preserved his pious brother from the peril of his fall;
for the brother, as he fell, with exceeding great devotion commanded
himself in a loud voice to St. Francis, and straightway he appeared
unto him, and, catching him, set him down upon the rocks without
suffering him to feel a shock or any hurt." Can it have been this "pious
brother" who wrote the _Fioretti_? Everywhere you go in La Verna you
feel that S. Francesco has been before you; and where there is no
tradition to help you, surely you will make one for yourself. Can he who
loved everything that had life have failed to love, too, that world he
saw from La Penna--

"Nel crudo sasso, intra Tevere ed Amo"

--Casentino and its woods and streams, Val d'Arno, Val di Tevere, the
hills of Perugia, the valleys of Umbria, the lean, wolfish country of
the Marche, the rugged mountains of Romag