hermitages that
had always had so strong an attachment for him.[5] There is hardly a
hill in Central Italy that has not preserved some memento of him. It
would be hard to walk half a day between Florence and Rome without
coming upon some hut on a hillside bearing his name or that of one of
his disciples.

There was a time when these huts were inhabited, when in these leafy
booths Egidio, Masseo, Bernardo, Silvestro, Ginepro, and many others
whose names history has forgotten, received visits from their spiritual
father, coming to them for their consolation.[6]

They gave him love for love and consolation for consolation. His poor
heart had great need of both, for in his long, sleepless nights it had
come to him at times to hear strange voices; weariness and regret were
laying hold on him, and looking over the past he was almost driven to
doubt of himself, his Lady Poverty, and everything.

Between Chiusi and Radicofani--an hour's walk from the village of
Sartiano--a few Brothers had made a shelter which served them by way of
hermitage, with a little cabin for Francis in a retired spot. There he
passed one of the most agonizing nights of his life. The thought that he
had exaggerated the virtue of asceticism and not counted enough upon the
mercy of God assailed him, and suddenly he came to regret the use he had
made of his life. A picture of what he might have been, of the tranquil
and happy home that might have been his, rose up before him in such
living colors that he felt himself giving way. In vain he disciplined
himself with his hempen girdle until the blood came; the vision would
not depart.

It was midwinter; a heavy fall of snow covered the ground; he rushed out
without his garment, and gathering up great heaps of snow began to make
a row of images. "See," he said, "here is thy wife, and behind her are
two sons and two daughters, with the servant and the maid carrying all
the baggage."

With this child-like representation of the tyranny of material cares
which he had escaped, he finally put away the temptation.[7]

There is nothing to show whether or not we should fix at the same epoch
another incident which legend gives as taking place at Sartiano. One day
a brother of whom he asked, "Whence do you come?" replied, "From your
cell." This simple answer was enough to make the vehement lover of
Poverty refuse to occupy it again. "Foxes have holes," he loved to
repeat, "and the birds of the air have nests, but t