riars
who went to Florence the butt of all sorts of persecutions.

Only a few weeks had passed since Francis began to preach, and already
his words and acts were sounding an irresistible appeal in the depths of
many a heart. We have arrived at the most unique and interesting period
in the history of the Franciscans. These first months are for their
institution what the first days of spring are for nature, days when the
almond-tree blossoms, bearing witness to the mysterious labor going on
in the womb of the earth, and heralding the flowers that will suddenly
enamel the fields. At the sight of these men--bare footed, scantily
clothed, without money, and yet so happy--men's minds were much divided.
Some held them to be mad, others admired them, finding them widely
different from the vagrant monks,[12] that plague of Christendom.

Sometimes, however, the friars found success not responding to their
efforts, the conversion of souls not taking form with enough rapidity
and vigor. To encourage them, Francis would then confide to them his
visions and his hopes. "I saw a multitude of men coming toward us,
asking that they might receive the habit of our holy religion, and lo,
the sound of their footsteps still echoes in my ears. I saw them coming
from every direction, filling all the roads."

Whatever the biographies may say, Francis was far from foreseeing the
sorrows that were to follow this rapid increase of his Order. The maiden
leaning with trembling rapture on her lover's arm no more dreams of the
pangs of motherhood than he thought of the dregs he must drain after
quaffing joyfully the generous wine of the chalice.[13]

Every prosperous movement provokes opposition by the very fact of its
prosperity. The herbs of the field have their own language for cursing
the longer-lived plants that smother them out; one can hardly live
without arousing jealousy; in vain the new fraternity showed itself
humble, it could not escape this law.

When the brethren went up to Assisi to beg from door to door, many
refused to give to them, reproaching them with desiring to live on the
goods of others after having squandered their own. Many a time they had
barely enough not to starve to death. It would even seem that the clergy
were not entirely without part in this opposition. The Bishop of Assisi
said to Francis one day: "Your way of living without owning anything
seems to me very harsh and difficult." "My lord," replied he, "if we
poss