companions could not be of much help to him. Moral
consolations are possible only from our peers, or when two hearts are
united by a mystical passion so great that they mingle and understand
one another.

"Ah, if the Brothers knew what I suffer," St. Francis said a few days
before the impression of the stigmata, "with what pity and compassion
they would be moved!"

But they, seeing him who had laid cheerfulness upon them as a duty
becoming more and more sad and keeping aloof from them, imagined that he
was tortured with temptations of the devil.[16]

Clara divined that which could not be uttered. At St. Damian her friend
was looking back over all the past: what memories lived again in a
single glance! Here, the olive-tree to which, a brilliant cavalier, he
had fastened his horse; there, the stone bench where his friend, the
priest of the poor chapel, used to sit; yonder, the hiding-place in
which he had taken refuge from the paternal wrath, and, above all, the
sanctuary with the mysterious crucifix of the decisive hour.

In living over these pictures of the radiant past, Francis aggravated
his pain; yet they spoke to him of other things than death and regret.
Clara was there, as steadfast, as ardent as ever. Long ago transformed
by admiration, she was now transfigured by compassion. Seated at the
feet of him whom she loved with more than earthly love she felt the
soreness of his soul, and the failing of his heart. After that, what did
it matter that Francis's tears became more abundant to the point of
making him blind for a fortnight? Soothing would come; the sister of
consolation would give him peace once more.

And first she kept him near her, and, herself taking part in the labor,
she made him a large cell of reeds in the monastery garden, that he
might be entirely at liberty as to his movements.

How could he refuse a hospitality so thoroughly Franciscan? It was
indeed only too much so: legions of rats and mice infested this retired
spot; at night they ran over Francis's bed with an infernal uproar, so
that he could find no repose from his sufferings. But he soon forgot all
that when near his sister-friend. Once again she gave back to him faith
and courage. "A single sunbeam," he used to say, "is enough to drive
away many shadows!"

Little by little the man of the former days began to show himself, and
at times the Sisters would hear, mingling with the murmur of the olive
trees and pines, the echo of unfamil