oubtless, that he ruled the State.
There is, however, no reason to suppose that he did not play an
important part in its government. Though a just and virtuous statesman,
Bernardo now forgot the special service of God, and gave himself with
heart and soul to mundane interests. At the age of forty, supported by
the wealth, alliances, and reputation of his semi-princely house, he had
become one of the most considerable party-leaders in that age of
faction. If we may trust his monastic biographer, he was aiming at
nothing less than the tyranny of Siena. But in that year, when he was
forty, a change, which can only be described as conversion, came over
him. He had advertised a public disputation, in which he proposed before
all comers to solve the most arduous problems of scholastic science. The
concourse was great, the assembly brilliant; but the hero of the day,
who had designed it for his glory, was stricken with sudden blindness.
In one moment he comprehended the internal void he had created for his
soul, and the blindness of the body was illumination to the spirit. The
pride, power, and splendour of this world seemed to him a smoke that
passes. God, penitence, eternity appeared in all the awful clarity of an
authentic vision. He fell upon his knees and prayed to Mary that he
might receive his sight again. This boon was granted; but the revelation
which had come to him in blindness was not withdrawn. Meanwhile the hall
of disputation was crowded with an expectant audience. Bernardo rose
from his knees, made his entry, and ascended the chair; but instead of
the scholastic subtleties he had designed to treat, he pronounced the
old text, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

Afterwards, attended by two noble comrades, Patrizio Patrizzi and
Ambrogio Piccolomini, he went forth into the wilderness. For the human
soul, at strife with strange experience, betakes itself instinctively to
solitude. Not only prophets of Israel, saints of the Thebaid, and
founders of religions in the mystic East have done so; even the Greek
Menander recognised, although he sneered at, the phenomenon. "The
desert, they say, is the place for discoveries." For the mediaeval mind
it had peculiar attractions. The wilderness these comrades chose was
Accona, a doleful place, hemmed in with earthen precipices, some fifteen
miles to the south of Siena. Of his vast possessions Bernardo retained
but this--

The lonesome lodge,
That s