, because
it but very indirectly concerns the life of St. Francis, but we must
note that these _acta_ have beyond their historic value a truly
remarkable psychological--one must almost say pathological--significance;
never was the mania for martyrdom better characterized than in these
long pages, where we see the friars forcing the Mahometans to pursue
them and make them win the heavenly palm. The forbearance which
Miramolin as well as his fellow religionists at first show gives an
idea of the civilization and the good qualities of these infidels, all
the higher that very different sentiments would be natural in the
vanquished ones of the plains of Tolosa.

It is impossible to call by the name of sermons the collections of rude
apostrophes which the missionaries addressed to those whom they wished
to convert; at this paroxysm the thirst for martyrdom becomes the
madness of suicide. Is this to say that friars Bernard, Pietro, Adjutus,
Accurso, and Otho have no right to the admiration and worship with which
they have been surrounded? Who would dare say so? Is not devotion always
blind? That a furrow should be fecund it must have blood, it must have
tears, such tears as St. Augustine has called the blood of the soul. Ah,
it is a great mistake to immolate oneself, for the blood of a single man
will not save the world nor even a nation; but it is a still greater
mistake not to immolate oneself, for then one lets others be lost, and
is oneself lost first of all.

I greet you, therefore, Martyrs of Morocco; you do not regret your
madness, I am sure, and if ever some righteous pedant gone astray in the
groves of paradise undertakes to demonstrate to you that it would have
been better worth while to remain in your own country, and found a
worthy family of virtuous laborers, I fancy that Miramolin, there become
your best friend, will take the trouble to refute him.

You were mad, but I envy such madness, for you felt that the essential
thing in this world is not to serve this ideal or that one, but with all
one's soul to serve the ideal which one has chosen.

When, a few months after, the story of their glorious end arrived at
Assisi, Francis discerned a feeling of pride among his companions and
reproached them in lively terms; he who would so have envied the lot of
the martyrs felt himself humbled because God had not judged him worthy
to share it. As the story was mingled with some words of eulogy of the
founder of the Order