hem. He repeats to himself the
exhortations that others had given him; we feel the effort to understand
and admire the ideal monk whom Ugolini and the Church have proposed to
him for an example:

The Lord says in the Gospels: "He who does not give up all that
he has cannot be my disciple. And he who would save his life
shall lose it." One gives up all he possesses and loses his life
when life gives himself entirely into the hands of his superior,
to obey him.... And when the inferior sees things which would be
better or more useful to his soul than those which the superior
commands him, let him offer to God the sacrifice of his will.

Reading this one might think that Francis was about to join the ranks of
those to whom submission to ecclesiastical authority is the very essence
of religion. But no; even here his true feeling is not wholly effaced,
he mingles his words with parentheses and illustrations, timid, indeed,
but revealing his deepest thought; always ending by enthroning the
individual conscience as judge of last resort.[6]

All this shows clearly enough that we must picture to ourselves moments
when his wounded soul sighs after passive obedience, the formula of
which, _perinde ac cadaver_, goes apparently much farther back than the
Company of Jesus. These were moments of exhaustion, when inspiration was
silent.

One day he was sitting with his companions, when he began to
groan and say: "There is hardly a monk upon earth who perfectly
obeys his superior." His companions, much astonished, said:
"Explain to us, father, what is perfect and supreme obedience."
Then, comparing him who obeys to a corpse, he replied: "Take a
dead body, and put it where you will, it will make no resistance;
when it is in one place it will not murmur, when you take it away
from there it will not object; put it in a pulpit, it will not
look up but down; wrap it in purple, it will only be doubly
pale."[7]

This longing for corpse-like obedience witnesses to the ravages with
which his soul had been laid waste; it corresponds in the moral domain
to the cry for annihilation of great physical anguish.

The worst was that he was absolutely alone. Everywhere else the
Franciscan obedience is living, active, joyful.[8]

He drank this cup to the very dregs, holding sacred the revolts dictated
by conscience. One day in the later years of his life a German friar
came to see him, and