ough draft of a Rule, such as we have it now,
is that which was distributed in the chapter of Whitsunday, 1221. The
variants, sometimes capital, which are found in the different texts, can
be nothing other than outlines of the corrections proposed by the
provincial ministers. Once admit the idea of considering this document
as a rough draft, we are very soon brought to think that it had already
undergone a rapid preliminary revision, a sort of pruning, in which
ecclesiastical authority has caused to disappear all that was in
flagrant contradiction with its own projects for the Order.

If it is asked, who could have made these curtailments, one name springs
at once to our lips--Ugolini. He criticised its exaggerated proportions,
its want of unity and precision. Later on it is related that Francis had
seen in a dream a multitude of starving friars, and himself unable to
satisfy their wants, because though all around him lay innumerable
crumbs of bread, they disappeared between his fingers when he would give
them to those about him. Then a voice from heaven said to him: "Francis,
make of these crumbs a wafer; with that thou shalt feed these starving
ones."

There is little hazard in assuming that this is the picturesque echo of
the conferences which took place at this time between Francis and the
cardinal; the latter might have suggested to him by such a comparison
the essential defects of his project. All this, no doubt, took place
during Francis's stay in Rome, in the beginning of 1221.[4]

Before going there, we must cast a glance over the similarity in
inspiration and even in style which allies the Rule of 1221 with another
of St. Francis's works, that which is known under the title of The
Admonitions.[5] This is a series of _spiritual counsels_ with regard
to the religious life; it is closely united both in matter and form with
the work which we have just examined. The tone of voice is so perfectly
the same that one is tempted to see in it parts of the original draft of
the Rule, separated from it as too prolix to find place in a Rule.

However it may be with this hypothesis, we find in The Admonitions all
the anxieties with which the soul of Francis was assailed in this
uncertain and troubled hour. Some of these counsels sound like bits from
a private journal. We see him seeking, with the simplicity of perfect
humility, for reasons for submitting himself, renouncing his ideas, and
not quite succeeding in finding t