the great woods; but among all these voices there is
not one which forces itself upon the attention, it is a melody which you
enjoy without listening. You let your eyes wander over the landscape,
still for long hours illumined with hieratic tints by the departed star
of day, and the peaks of the Apennines, flooded with rainbow hues, drop
down into your soul what the Franciscan poet called the nostalgia of the
everlasting hills.[10]

More than anyone Francis felt it. The very evening of their arrival,
seated upon a mound in the midst of his Brothers, he gave them his
directions for their dwelling-place.

The quiet of nature would have sufficed to sow in their hearts some
germs of sadness, and the voice of the master harmonized with the
emotion of the last gleams of light; he spoke with them of his
approaching death, with the regret of the laborer overtaken by the
shades of evening before the completion of his task, with the sighs of
the father who trembles for the future of his children.[11]

For himself he desired from this time to prepare himself for death by
prayer and contemplation; and he begged them to protect him from all
intrusion. Orlando,[12] who had already come to bid them welcome and
offer his services, had at his request hastily caused a hut of boughs to
be made, at the foot of a great beech. It was there that he desired to
dwell, at a stone's throw from the cells inhabited by his companions.
Brother Leo was charged to bring him each day that which he would need.

He retired to it immediately after this memorable conversation, but
several days later, embarrassed no doubt by the pious curiosity of the
friars, who watched all his movements, he went farther into the woods,
and on Assumption Day he there began the Lent which he desired to
observe in honor of the Archangel Michael and the celestial host.

Genius has its modesty as well as love. The poet, the artist, the saint,
need to be alone when the Spirit comes to move them. Every effort of
thought, of imagination, or of will is a prayer, and one does not pray
in public.

Alas for the man who has not in his inmost heart some secret which may
not be told, because it cannot be spoken, and because if it were spoken
it could not be understood. SECRETUM MEUM MIHI! Jesus felt it deeply:
the raptures of Tabor are brief; they may not be told.

Before these soul mysteries materialists and devotees often meet and are
of one mind in demanding precision in those