s to
have been that of reducing their wants so far as possible, and while
preserving their fortunes to distribute to the poor at proper intervals
the free portion of the revenue after contenting themselves with the
strictly necessary.[22]

To do with joy the duties of their calling; to give a holy inspiration
to the slightest actions; to find in the infinitely littles of
existence, things apparently the most commonplace, parts of a divine
work; to keep pure from all debasing interest; to use things as not
possessing them, like the servants in the parable who would soon have to
give account of the talents confided to them; to close their hearts to
hatred, to open them wide to the poor, the sick, to all abandoned ones,
such were the other essential duties of the Brothers and Sisters of
Penitence.

To lead them into this royal road of liberty, love, and responsibility,
Francis sometimes appealed to the terrors of hell and the joys of
paradise, but interested love was so little a part of his nature that
these considerations and others of the same kind occupy an entirely
secondary place in those of his writings which remain, as also in his
biographies.

For him the gospel life is natural to the soul. Whoever comes to know it
will prefer it; it has no more need to be proved than the outer air and
the light. It needs only to lead prisoners to it, for them to lose all
desire to return to the dungeons of avarice, hatred, or frivolity.

Francis and his true disciples make the painful ascent of the mountain
heights, impelled solely, but irresistibly, by the inner voice. The only
foreign aid which they accept is the memory of Jesus, going before them
upon these heights and mysteriously living again before their eyes in
the sacrament of the eucharist.

The letter to all Christians in which these thoughts break forth is a
living souvenir of St. Francis's teachings to the Tertiaries.

To represent these latter to ourselves in a perfectly concrete form we
may resort to the legend of St. Lucchesio, whom tradition makes the
first Brother of Penitence.[23]

A native of a little city of Tuscany he quitted it to avoid its
political enmities, and established himself at Poggibonsi, not far from
Sienna, where he continued to trade in grain. Already rich, it was not
difficult for him to buy up all the wheat, and, selling it in a time of
scarcity, realize enormous profits. But soon overcome by Francis's
preaching, he took himself to tas